Scientists have formally named a new living cat species for the first time in more than a century: Leopardus tilcayo, a small spotted wild cat from Bolivia’s Yungas cloud forests.
The paper was published online on Thursday in Current Biology.
It is not a house cat. It is a wild tiger cat, smaller than a typical domestic cat, and scientists do not yet know how many survive in the wild. The news spread on accounts such as @AMAZlNGNATURE, which posted photos of the animal and called it the first new cat species in more than 100 years.
New cat species discovered in over 100 years
Scientists have identified Leopardus tilcayo, a tiny wild cat found in Bolivia’s Yungas forests. The discovery began with a wildlife sanctuary reporting a “weird cat” and was later confirmed through genetic research pic.twitter.com/9VVJgdYTIH
— Nature is Amazing ☘️ (@AMAZlNGNATURE) September 17, 2026
What Was Found
The species belongs to the South American tiger-cat group, long lumped under names such as oncilla, tigrina, or Leopardus tigrinus. A team led in part by National Geographic Explorer Paola Nogales-Ascarrunz and geneticist Eduardo Eizirik of Brazil’s PUCRS compared complete genomes from 38 Leopardus individuals, including 26 tiger cats and DNA from museum skins. The Bolivian animals formed their own lineage, split from relatives about 1.4 million years ago. That gap is comparable, the authors say, to the split between modern lions and extinct cave lions.
They named it Leopardus tilcayo after the word local communities already used. The same study recognized five tiger-cat species in total and described a new Peruvian subspecies, Leopardus tigrinus antisuyo.
Not a House Cat
It is a wild felid. A local family in Bolivia’s Nor Yungas kept one animal at home after it was found as a kitten around 2016. In 2017 they turned it over to Senda Verde Animal Refuge in the Yungas.
Staff first treated it as a northern tiger cat. Nogales-Ascarrunz met the cat while volunteering and later helped prove it was something else. That male, now about 10 years old, is the holotype and the only known individual living under human care. He cannot go back to the wild because he was partly raised in a home.
Average house cats often weigh 8 to 10 pounds. The tilcayo is much smaller: about 16.7 to 19.6 inches (42.5–50.5 cm) from head to rump, a tail of 9.8 to 10.4 inches (25–26.5 cm), and roughly 3 pounds (about 1.3–2 kg). Fur is light brown with irregular rosettes. Ears are rounded. Researchers say the spots and tail do not match classic Brazilian oncilla descriptions. Related tiger cats eat small rodents and lizards; camera-trap and scat clues suggest this species is likely nocturnal and hunts the same kind of prey. Litter size in the wild is unknown.
Where It Lives
Confirmed range, so far, is the Bolivian Yungas: humid, often cloud-covered forest on the eastern Andes where the mountains meet the Amazon basin. The type locality is near Arapata in Nor Yungas, La Paz Department, at about 1,570 meters (5,150 feet). The holotype is cataloged as CBF-11990. Scientists say the cat may also occur in nearby Yungas of northern Argentina (Jujuy has been mentioned as a possibility), but that is not confirmed. Camera traps are now going up to find wild animals. Tiger cats are easy to misidentify as margays or oncillas on photos, which is why the species stayed hidden.
How Many Are There?
No census exists. Researchers genetically confirmed the species from two individuals, including the Senda Verde male. Nogales-Ascarrunz has said they do not know how many remain in the forest. Genomic data in the paper hint at a historically small, declining lineage and a possible “vulnerable” profile if IUCN assesses it on its own. IUCN still treats tiger cats more broadly as two vulnerable species. The authors have shared the split with IUCN so each lineage can be scored separately. The Yungas is one of the most threatened forest systems in the region, under pressure from agriculture.
When Did Something Like This Last Happen?
Researchers and coverage describe L. tilcayo as the first entirely new living cat species formally named and described in more than 100 years. The usual benchmark is the Uruguayan pampas cat, Leopardus fasciatus, described in 1923. That is the claim in the paper’s highlights and in National Geographic, Reuters, New Scientist, and Live Science.
Other small South American cats have been split out of existing names in the last 15 years, but not found as brand-new animals:
- Southern tiger cat, Leopardus guttulus — recognized as separate in 2013
- Eastern tigrina, Leopardus emiliae — proposed 2017
- Clouded tiger cat, Leopardus pardinoides — elevated in 2024
- Pampas cats were split into several species around 2020–2021
- Leopardus narinensis was named in 2023 from a 1989 museum skin in Colombia
Those were taxonomic revisions or old specimens. L. tilcayo is different: it had no prior scientific name, was not a subspecies raised to species rank, and was identified from living animals plus genomes. That is why the authors call it the first novel living felid described in over a century.
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