09/19/2026
Science: 'where has this cat been for 100 years?'
Grandpa: 'my kitchen'
In 2016, a man in Bolivia found a tiny kitten on a road near a forest. He assumed it was an abandoned domestic cat, so he took it home and raised it. He fed it noodles and eggs. He treated it like a pet. For about a year, the little animal lived in his house, growing and behaving in ways that were, in hindsight, not very housecat-like at all. Eventually, he realized it was not a domestic breed and handed it over to a wildlife sanctuary in the foothills of the Andes.
That decision would change the history of feline science.
The sanctuary called Paola Nogales-Ascarrunz, a Bolivian biologist and National Geographic Explorer. She was known for her work with wild cats, and the staff described the animal as a weird cat. When she arrived, she was immediately fascinated. The cat had a small, scrunched-up face, short round ears, and long whiskers. It was covered in leopard-like spots and was too small to be a house cat. Nogales-Ascarrunz took a hundred pictures of it that day.
At the time, she assumed it was a member of a known species called Leopardus tigrinus, commonly known as the tiger cat or oncilla. That species had been described back in 1775 and was believed to exist across much of South America, including Bolivia. For years, that was the end of the story.
But in 2019, while preparing a booklet about Bolivia's cat species, Nogales-Ascarrunz noticed something wrong. The cat she had photographed had much larger rosettes than the reference photos of tiger cats from neighboring Brazil. The markings did not match. She thought, this is so wrong. That observation started a scientific investigation that would take years to complete.
Working with researchers from Belgium and Brazil, she analyzed DNA from 38 cats across South America, including museum specimens that were over a century old. The results were stunning. Tiger cats were not one species. They were at least five. And one of them was completely new to science.
The new species was named Leopardus tilcayo, after the name local communities in the Yungas have used for generations. When researchers asked why they called it tilcayo, the answer was simple. "I don't know. My grandpa called it tilcayo, so I call it tilcayo."
The tilcayo is smaller than an average domestic cat, measuring about 46 centimeters from head to body and weighing around 1.3 to 1.4 kilograms. It has light brown fur with large, irregularly shaped rosettes, rounded ears, and a long, slender tail. Genetic analysis showed its lineage split from other tiger cats about 1.4 million years ago, a divergence deep enough to confirm it as a separate species.
This is the first new living cat species formally described by science since the pampas cat in 1923. The discovery was published in the journal Current Biology in September 2026.
The cat that started it all is a 10-year-old male who now lives at the Senda Verde wildlife sanctuary. He has a nickname. The staff call him Tigrino. He will stay there for the rest of his life.
Very little is known about the tilcayo's daily life. Researchers have only two live individuals and a small number of camera-trap records to work with. Camera traps suggest it may be nocturnal, and rodent remains found in its s**t indicate small rodents are part of its diet. Its total population in the wild is unknown.
The Yungas forests where the tilcayo lives are facing pressure from deforestation, agricultural expansion, fires, and mining. Researchers have submitted their findings to the International Union for Conservation of Nature, which will assess the five tiger cat lineages separately. That could give a clearer picture of the risks facing each species.
