Scientists Find First New Cat in 100 Years

The story began when a local resident found the cat near the forest. The person took it home as a pet, but it did not behave like a house cat, so it was later given to the Senda Verde wildlife sanctuary. There, the Bolivian biologist Paola Nogales-Ascarrunz noticed that it did not match descriptions of tiger cats, small spotted South American cats that are hard to tell apart. Her team studied DNA from 38 cats, including eight museum specimens, and found that there are actually five separate species of tiger cat. The new cat's family line split from the others about 1.4 million years ago.

Scientists still know very little about the tilcayo. Eduardo Eizirik, a researcher in Brazil, told the BBC (the British Broadcasting Corporation) that the cat "was hiding because nobody was looking". The team examined only two live animals, and the BBC says just one living member is confirmed: a 10-year-old male called Tigrino. Researchers believe more survive in the wild. The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) is expected to assess tiger cats as five species, and the tilcayo could be listed as endangered, because its forests face deforestation, farming, fires and mining.