A new kind of cat just dropped, and it’s adorable. It’s smaller than a common house cat, yet looks as ferocious as a jungle cat. Researchers who published their findings in Current Biology officially described it as the Leopardus tilcayo, or the tilcayo tiger cat, and it’s the first time in over 100 years that a totally new cat species has been identified.
The newly discovered kitty weighs only three pounds and is about 18 inches long. It has a scrunched-up face that makes it look like it’s putting on a mild scowl at all times. It has oversized rosettes (aka the spots on its fur) and a bit of an attitude it probably needs to survive in the Bolivian Andes.
It was originally spotted back in 2016 when a local Bolivian man dropped off a cat at a wildlife center, thinking it was a weird version of a regular domestic kitten. National Geographic Explorer Paola Nogales-Ascarrunz is one of the study’s authors, and she got to see the tilcayo tiger cat up close.
A Mysterious Kitten in Bolivia Turned Out to Be an Entirely New Cat Species
The original assumption everyone made was that it was a Brazilian tiger cat, but genetic testing led by Nogales-Ascarrunz and her team found that this particular cat’s lineage split from Tiger cats roughly 1.4 million years ago, making it an entirely separate species previously unknown to science, though it has been known to local indigenous communities for generations.
The discovery expands the tiger cat family tree to five distinct species, but researchers should act quickly to study these adorable little cats because the Yungas cloud forest they call home is threatened by deforestation and development, which could soon lead to their classification as endangered.
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