Bolivia's tilcayo is the first wholly new cat species named in a century

EDITORIAL NOTE: This is a National Geographic wildlife/zoology story with no cybersecurity or technology angle. It appears to have entered the pipeline by mistake, and none of the publication’s valid tags accurately describe it. Summary follows for reference only.

Researchers in Bolivia have described Leopardus tilcayo, a small spotted cat from the Yungas forest on the eastern Andean slope, in a new Current Biology study. It is the first genuinely new felid species named in over 100 years — not a revived old name or a subspecies promoted to species rank, but something new to science. The animal, first noticed by biologist Paola Nogales-Ascarrunz at a wildlife sanctuary in 2017, was long assumed to be a tiger cat (Leopardus tigrinus) until whole-genome comparison of 38 individuals showed it diverged from its relatives roughly 1.4 million years ago.

The significance is methodological as much as taxonomic: genomics is redrawing the small-cat family tree. What was treated as one tiger cat species is now recognized as five, the study proposes a new Peruvian subspecies, and it hints the margay may actually be four species. Because conservation status hinges on geographic range, splitting one wide-ranging ‘species’ into several smaller-range ones means each must be reassessed — potentially revealing populations that are far more endangered than currently believed. Specialists expect similar genomic methods to uncover more hidden small-cat species in Africa and Asia.