The tilcayo is the new wild cat on the block

In 2017, a biologist walked into a wildlife rescue center in Bolivia and saw a cat so small and slender she assumed it was a kitten. The staff told her it was an adult. That moment set off a nearly decade-long scientific journey that would eventually lead to the description of the first new wild cat species in more than 100 years: the tilcayo, a three-pound, spotted feline from the Bolivian Yungas forest.

The accidental discovery of a new cat

The tilcayo’s path to scientific recognition began not in a lab, but on a rural road in the Yungas forest. A local man found a tiny, dirty kitten during a rainstorm and took it home. Over the course of a year, the cat grew—but not much. More tellingly, it started chasing chickens and behaving nothing like a domestic cat. The man brought it to the Santa Verde rescue center, where biologist Paula Nogales Escarón eventually encountered it.

At the time, the cat was assumed to be a Leopardus tigrinus, a species of small spotted cat known as the tiger cat or oncilla. But when Nogales Escarón checked a field guide, something didn’t add up. The picture in the book showed a cat with small, solid spots; the animal in front of her had large, rosette-shaped markings. The description didn’t match either. She began to suspect the book was wrong—but the more important question was whether the cat itself was something different.