A new species of wild cat discovered in Bolivia.

In September 2026 an international team of biologists announced that a previously unknown species of wild cat lives in the mountain forests of Bolivia. The discovery surprised many, because cats are among the best-studied animals on the planet. With this the tilcayo became the first new species of wild cat that scientists have described in more than a hundred years. The research was led by the Bolivian biologist Paola Nogales Ascarrunz, and the results have been published in a respected scientific journal.

The new species was given the name tilcayo, which people from that area have been using for generations. In doing so the scientists wanted to honour the knowledge of the indigenous communities. The adult tilcayo is smaller than an ordinary house cat. The male that the scientists measured has a length of about 45 centimetres and weighs less than one and a half kilograms. It has light brown fur with unusually large dark spots and a longer tail. Yet at first glance it looks very similar to the other tiger cats, the small wild cats of South America.

For a long time scientists thought that most tiger cats belonged to the same species, because they look almost identical. To check this, they compared the genetic material of more than 30 cats from several countries in South America. They used both old bones and skins from museums in the US and in Europe. The analysis showed that tiger cats are actually five separate species. The tilcayo split off from the other tiger cats about 1.4 million years ago.

So far only one tilcayo lives in captivity. It is a roughly ten-year-old male, which lives in the animal refuge Senda Verde. The refuge is located in the mountains, not far from the city of La Paz. Previously a local family kept it at home as a pet. Later the family handed it over to the refuge, where scientists were able to study it.

The forests in which the tilcayo lives are being destroyed quickly. People are cutting down the trees, expanding fields and digging mines. That is why scientists believe that the new species probably is in danger. Now they are setting up automatic cameras in the forest, in order to find out where exactly the tilcayo lives and how many of them there are.