Add The New York Post on Google A new cat species has been identified for the first time in more than a century — and it’s a three-pound miniature leopard lookalike.
The adorable feline, named Leopardus tilcayo, was identified in Bolivia’s lush Yungas forest after biologist Paola Nogales-Ascarrunz was called about “a weird cat” given to a local wildlife sanctuary, National Geographic reported.
Researchers have identified a new cat species, the Leopardus tilcayo, for the first time in over a century. via REUTERS “I took a hundred pictures of it,” Nogales-Ascarrunz, a National Geographic Explorer and founder of the Bolivian Felids Research Program, told the outlet. “I was so fascinated.”
A man initially took in the wild cat after stumbling upon it on a road near a forest, believing it was a domestic breed. But after a year living beside the wild animal, the owner thought the creature might be better off at a sanctuary, the publication reported.
The tiny wonder — light brown, slender, and covered in rosette-shaped spots similar to a leopard’s — is part of a group of tiger cats that inhabit much of South America, researchers revealed Thursday in the journal Current Biology.
The tilcayo is a mere 18 inches long and weighs just three pounds, making it smaller than the average house cat.
After photographing the cat for a booklet about Bolivia’s cat species in 2019, Nogales-Ascarrunz realized that the feline she photographed did not resemble other species of the genus Leopardus.
A few years later, Nogales-Ascarrunz teamed up with Eduardo Eizirik, a geneticist at Pontifical Catholic University of Rio Grande do Sul in Brazil, and study co-lead Jonas Lescroart from the University of Antwerp to investigate the mysterious cat.
The team’s genetic analysis suggested the tilcayo lineage separated from other tiger cats about 1.4 million years ago.
“The more differences in their DNA, the longer the time that we estimate those lineages to have been physically separated,” Lescroart, study co-lead author, told Reuters.
National Geographic Explorer Paola Nogales Ascarrunz observes a Leopardus tilcayo cat at the Senda Verde animal refuge in the Yungas region, Bolivia. via REUTERS The Leopardus tilcayo, with its short, round ears and scrunched-up face, is the first new cat species discovered since the pampas cat in 1923.
Little is still known about the tilcayo, including the size of its wild population, how it reproduces, what it eats, and how it lives day to day.
Researchers hope the methods used to identify the brand-new Bolivian feline will help uncover more species worldwide.
The new findings should also signal the need to expand conservation efforts to protect species, discovered or undiscovered, in complex mountain forests and beyond, Nogales-Ascarrunz argued.
“Even in the cats, there are things out there that are undescribed, things that people haven’t found yet,” says Nogales-Ascarrunz. “So let’s go out and find them and protect them.”
