An international team of scientists has confirmed the existence of a new wild cat species in Bolivia: the tilcayo cat (Leopardus tilcayo). It is the first new cat species identified in more than a century.
The story began at an animal refuge in the Yungas, a cloud forest in the Bolivian Andes. The conservationist Paola Nogales Ascarrunz, a National Geographic Explorer, met a small cat there that had been handed in by a local family. DNA analysis of living animals and museum specimens showed that what was thought to be a single species, the tiger cat, is in fact at least five different species.
The study was published in the scientific journal Current Biology. The name “Tilcayo” is the one local communities already used for the animal. According to the researcher, it is a way of honouring the ancestral knowledge of these communities.
