Scientists Stunned: World’s Cat Family Just Grew by Three New Species

The global cat family just got bigger, and stranger. Researchers have confirmed that a spotted wild cat living in a Bolivian rescue sanctuary is a brand-new species, one that spent years hiding in plain sight as a supposed house cat.

The animal, nicknamed “Tigrino,” has been formally named Leopardus tilcayo. It’s the only confirmed living member of its species known to science, though experts suspect more are roaming Bolivia’s dense Yungas forests undetected.

A House Cat That Wasn’t

Tigrino’s story began when a local resident found the animal in the forest and assumed it was an ordinary kitten. As the cat grew older, its behavior made one thing clear: it was never domesticated stock.

Dr. Paola Nogales-Ascarrunz, a researcher at Universidad Mayor de San Andrés in La Paz, first noticed something was off while volunteering at the sanctuary. She had also heard scattered reports of unusual wild cats elsewhere nearby.

Those leads pushed her to team up with researchers around the world to trace the animal’s genetic roots. The team compared DNA from living cats with archived museum specimens to finally crack the mystery.

Their findings, published in the journal Current Biology, revealed something bigger than one new cat. The tiger cat group, long assumed to hold just a few close relatives, turned out to be far more genetically diverse than anyone realized.

Small Cats, Big Blind Spot

Tiger cats are a group of small, spotted wild cats found from Costa Rica down through Bolivia and Argentina. They’re roughly house-cat sized, but their near-identical markings have long confused even trained experts.

Geneticist Eduardo Eizirik of the Pontifical Catholic University of Rio Grande do Sul in Brazil said the species simply left no paper trail. Few photos or museum records existed, so nobody had reason to look closer, until now.

The new study suggests the tiger cat complex actually holds five distinct species rather than three, with Leopardus tilcayo among the newly recognized group. That shift nudges the world’s total recognized cat species from 41 up toward 44 or more.

Dr. Caroline Sartor of Oxford’s Wildlife Conservation Research Unit said naming the species is only step one. Conservationists can’t protect an animal whose range was never even documented in the first place.

Tiger cats already face mounting pressure from deforestation, habitat loss and illegal hunting. Because tilcayo was left out of earlier conservation assessments, experts warn it may need urgent protective status soon.

Andrew Kitchener, a mammal expert at National Museums Scotland who wasn’t involved in the study, called the group a long-running “taxonomic nightmare.” He noted that genetics is only now catching up to what these elusive cats have concealed all along.