Biologists Discover Tiny Wild Cat Species

Cat lovers rejoice! A new species of wild cat has been identified deep in Bolivia – the first completely new species discovered in more than a century. It’s small and spotted and adorable, but it’s still wild so don’t expect it to turn up in your local pet store any time soon.

According to National Geographic, Paola Nogales-Ascarrunz, a biologist and National Geographic Explorer working in Bolivia,  first stumbled upon the tiny wild cat in 2017.  She told National Geographic that she received a call from a local wildlife sanctuary that had been given what it described as “a weird cat.”

Too Small for a Housecat
A local man had found a kitten on a road near a forest and took it home, believing it was just a housecat. But after living with the clearly wild animal for about a year, he realized it would be better off at an animal sanctuary.

The cat had a small, scrunched-up face, short and round ears, and long whiskers. It was too small to be a housecat. It was 18-inches long and weighed about three pounds. Unlike domestic felines, it was covered in leopard-like spots. So, Nogales-Ascarrunz went to visit the animal at the Senda Verde wildlife sanctuary on the subtropical flank of the Bolivian Andes.

It would take another few years before Nogales-Ascarrunz developed her skills in genetic analysis to be able to investigate the mystery cat’s genome with any accuracy. Genomes contain all of an organism’s genetic information. 

In the summer of 2026 she and her co-researchers, Eduardo Eizirik, a geneticist at Pontifical Catholic University of Rio Grande do Sul in Brazil, and Jonas Lescroart from the University of Antwerp, the study’s co-lead author, announced the new species in Current Biology.

“Our world is extremely complex,” Nogales-Ascarrunz said. “Sometimes we think that most of it is known, that there’s not a whole lot to discover, but in fact, it’s the other way around.”

Locals Call it Tilcayo
The researchers propose to call the new cat Leopardus tilcayo, since locals in Bolivia have been referring to it as tilcayo for generations. The name does not appear to have a particular meaning in Spanish or the Quechua language spoken in Bolivia.

According to Gizmado, everyone who saw the cat originally assumed 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. Although, as noted, tilcayos themselves have been familiar to Bolivian indigenous communities for generations.

A Rare Discovery
The discovery of a new mammal, especially a cat, is rare. It’s even more rare to find an entirely new species rather than a variation of a known species. The tilcayo was one of five distinct species of tiger cat in South America identified in the study and the only one that had not been identified before. 

The study analyzed the genomes of 38 cats, including 26 Leopardus cats. “The tilcayo is the first living cat species to be discovered and newly named in over a century,” lead study author Jonas Lescroart, an evolutionary ecologist at the University of Antwerp in Belgium, told Gizmodo. 

“Our current study presents the most complete genetic study yet, including that key missing element: DNA from tiger cats in the Guianas, which is the location where the original tiger cat L tigrinus had been described in 1775,” he said. 

Studying small cats can be challenging. They are exceptionally good at remaining out of sight. Even photos taken by remote trail cameras may not provide enough visual evidence to distinguish a separate species. The most reliable way is to study their genes.

The discovery of the tilcayos is a cause for celebration, and a reminder that there are other wonders in nature waiting to be found.