Meet the Adorable and Tiny Tilcayo, the First Brand-New Cat Species Identified in More Than a Century

Discovered in a cloud forest in Brazil, the diminutive felines are smaller than a house cat and covered in large, irregularly shaped rosettes

Sarah Kuta | Daily Correspondent

September 21, 2026 10:00 a.m.

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For the first time in more than 100 years, scientists have identified a new species of wild cat.

The diminutive feline, dubbed the tilcayo, lives in the Bolivian Yungas, the cloud forest where the eastern slopes of the Andes Mountains meet the Amazon basin. It’s smaller than a house cat, weighing just three to four pounds, and has large, irregularly shaped rosettes dotting its light brown fur.

Scientists say the creature, which they describe in a study published September 17 in the journal Current Biology, is a reminder that the natural world still holds plenty of mysteries.

“Our world is extremely complex,” study co-author Paola Nogales-Ascarrunz, a biologist and the founder of the Bolivian Felids Research Program, tells National Geographic’s Jason Bittel. “Sometimes we think that most of it is known, that there’s not a whole lot to discover, but in fact, it’s the other way around.”

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The tilcayo’s discovery story began around 2016, when a local man found a tiny cat on a road in the forest near La Paz. Thinking it was a domestic kitten, the man took the creature home and started feeding it noodles, rice and eggs. After about a year, however, he realized the animal was probably wild. He took it to the nonprofit Senda Verde Wildlife Sanctuary.

That’s where Nogales-Ascarrunz first encountered the mysterious animal, a male nicknamed Tigrino that had rounded ears, a small face and big, leopard-like spots. At first, she thought the creature might be a northern tiger cat, also called the oncilla (Leopardus tigrinus). But that identification didn’t seem quite right—the cat itself was too small, its rosettes were too large and its tail seemed different.

“It didn’t really match,” she tells the New York Times’ Kate Golembiewski.

Genetic testing confirmed her hunch: The unusual cat belonged to its own separate species, one that was previously unknown to science. Researchers named the creature L. tilcayo because tilcayo is what local people call it—though the origins of that name remain unclear.

“When you ask, ‘Does it have some meaning in Quechua or Almyra and other Indigenous languages?’ they say, ‘No, my grandpa told me that’s the tilcayo,’” Nogales-Ascarrunz tells NBC News’ Evan Bush. “This is a traditional knowledge that they have in the community. We want to preserve that knowledge, and we didn’t want to give it another name.”

Because the cats are so small and elusive, scientists know very little about L. tilcayo, including its diet, lifestyle and behaviors. Researchers also don’t know how many tilcayo exist in the wild. However, scat samples suggest the cats might eat small rodents, and wildlife camera footage hints that they could be nocturnal, per Reuters’ Marta Serafinko.

A genetic analysis of 38 individuals from the Leopardus genus—a group colloquially called tiger cats—revealed that L. tilcayo split off from the lineage roughly 1.4 million years ago during the Early Pleistocene, a period of substantial climate fluctuation. As glaciers advanced and retreated, tropical forest lowlands became dry savannas, the researchers write in the paper. Montane forests, meanwhile, held onto their humidity, acting as “climatic refugia” for cloud forest species. The resulting habitat fragmentation likely isolated different populations of tiger cats, setting the stage for their genetic divergence.

The cat family tree has gained several new branches in recent decades as researchers have elevated subspecies to full species or determined that what was once considered a single species is actually multiple. L. tilcayo, however, is different. It’s the first brand-new feline species identified since the pampas cat in 1923.

With the addition of L. tilcayo, scientists have now described five distinct species of tiger cat, which live in Central and South America. Beyond the new member, the group includes the northern tiger cat (L. tigrinus), the southern tiger cat (L. guttulus), the clouded tiger cat (L. pardinoides) and the eastern tiger cat (L. emiliae). Nogales-Ascarrunz and colleagues also identified a new subspecies found in Peru’s Yungas called L. tigrinus antisuyo.

“There are more cat species,” Leslie Lyons, a veterinary geneticist at the University of California, Davis who was not involved with the study, tells New Scientist’s Chris Simms. “Who can’t love that?”

Overall, the findings are good news. But they could also have important implications for conservation. A species that appears widespread can look much more vulnerable—and in need of protection from threats like deforestation, habitat fragmentation, disease and wildlife trafficking—once its range and population get divided among several distinct species.

“Once three species become five species, each population is reduced,” Jim Sanderson, founder and director of the Small Wild Cat Conservation Foundation who was not involved in the study, tells National Geographic. “Therefore, conservation efforts must increase, perhaps urgently, depending on estimated population sizes.”

Sarah Kuta is a writer and editor based in Longmont, Colorado. She covers history, science, travel, food and beverage, sustainability, economics and other topics.