A small spotted cat that a family in Bolivia kept as a pet, then handed to a wildlife sanctuary, has been formally described as a new species, Leopardus tilcayo. The paper appeared in Current Biology on 17 September 2026, and National Geographic describes it as the first cat species discovered since the pampas cat in 1923.
The animal weighs about three pounds and measures roughly 18 inches from head to the base of the tail, smaller than most house cats.
From Family Pet to La Senda Verde
The route into the scientific record began with a kitten. National Geographic’s account says a local man brought it to the La Senda Verde wildlife sanctuary in 2017, believing it to be a domestic breed. Al Jazeera dates the arrival to 2016 and calls the animal an orphaned kitten, and EarthSky adds that the family had kept it as a pet for about a year before donating it. The reports differ on the year, but all place the cat in the refuge.
Biologist Paola Nogales-Ascarrunz examined it and noticed features that did not match the animals she knew. She first assumed it was Leopardus tigrinus, the northern tiger cat, according to National Geographic, and the doubt that followed led to the genetic work, which was then folded into a wider comparison of tiger cats being run by researchers in several countries. EarthSky quotes her describing its fur as light brown with irregularly shaped rosettes across the body.
Thirty-Eight Genomes and Eight Museum Skins
The identification rested on comparative genomics, and it had to, because the tilcayo looks much like other tiger cats by appearance alone and the discovery depended on DNA rather than on a field sighting. The animal came to science from captivity, not from the forest, and its range in the wild is still unmapped. The team analysed complete genomes from 38 individuals across the genus, including DNA from eight historical museum specimens collected decades ago, an approach the authors call museomics. The result, reported in the paper titled Phylogenomics and museomics reveal five distinct species of tiger cats in South America, is that the group once treated as a single species contains five.
The tilcayo split from the lineage that includes the northern tiger cat nearly 1.4 million years ago, in the Early Pleistocene. The Sci.News summary of the paper says climatic swings in that era probably fragmented the forests and isolated populations. National Geographic compares the gap to the one between modern lions and cave lions.
Sci.News credits the paper to Jonas Lescroart and colleagues. Lescroart told Al Jazeera that the pieces clicked once the data were merged.
The measurements in the formal description give the species a body of 42.5 to 50.5 centimetres from head to rump, a tail of 25 to 26.5 centimetres and a light brown back marked with large dark rosettes, per Sci.News. Sci.News adds that the genomic analysis recovered several distinct lineages within the Leopardus tigrinus complex alongside the previously recognised southern tiger cat, Leopardus guttulus, which is how the paper arrives at five species.
A Range Nobody Has Mapped
The species lives in the Yungas, a transitional cloud-forest zone along the Andes in Bolivia, and its range is not known. Sci.News reports that the paper also identified a new subspecies of another lineage in Peru’s Yungas. Lescroart told Al Jazeera the team hopes there are thousands of tilcayos but has no idea, and that local elders report fewer sightings than before.
National Geographic also reports that the same methodology may reveal further undescribed small cat species elsewhere in the world, a point that Mongabay’s headline on the discovery makes explicit by saying more may follow. The tilcayo thus matters beyond Bolivia, since museum skins collected long ago can now be read genetically and compared with living animals.
The conservation stakes follow from the split. The Sci.News summary says nearly all tiger cat lineages declined across the Pleistocene and Holocene, some by more than 60 percent, and Al Jazeera cites historical declines of up to 80 percent for tiger cats. Geneticist Eduardo Eizirik told National Geographic that someone who treats the animals as a single species is going to find it is not endangered, whereas recognising separate species means each population needs its own assessment.
The name itself is local: National Geographic reports that people in the region called the animal tilcayo, though the meaning of the word is unclear, and Al Jazeera says the name comes from local knowledge passed through generations. No source gives a population estimate for the new species, and the paper’s own count of five tiger cat species means each lineage now needs a separate conservation status. Whether the tilcayo is rare or merely overlooked is the first number that assessment will have to supply.
This article was produced with the assistance of AI and reviewed by Morning Overview editors prior to publication.
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