This story started with a guy finding a kitten on a road in Bolivia and taking it home because he thought it was a house cat. About a year later he realized this was definitely a wild animal and turned it over to a sanctuary. That cat is now known as Leopardus tilcayo. It weighs only about 3 pounds, smaller than the average house cat, and genetic testing showed it comes from a line that split from its closest relatives around 1.4 million years ago. Scientists had been looking at these little spotted cats for years without realizing they were dealing with a completely different species.
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- Posted
- 2026-09-18 13:14 UTC
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- 56m ago via trade comments
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- Solana
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Tilcayo a tiny wild cat from Bolivia’s Yungas cloud forest, formally described today (17 Sep 2026) as the first new living cat species in over 100 years.