South America A new species of cat has been found in Bolivia. It is the first time in over a hundred years that a new wild cat species has been identified and officially named.
The spotted cat species has previously gone unrecognized because it was mixed with other wild cat species with similar fur coloring, says BBC. Found in the Yungas mountain forests of Bolivia Leopardus tilcayo was identified as a new, separate species based on genetic data.
Researchers led Leopardus tilcayon traces a peculiar course of events, which tells about, among other things National Geographic.
About ten years ago, a Bolivian man found a kitten on the side of the road at the edge of the forest. He assumed the animal was tame and took it to live in his home.
The man fed the cat with noodles, rice and eggs, he says, for example NBC. After living with the animal, which turned out to be a wild cat, for about a year, he came to the conclusion that it would be better for the individual to grow up somewhere else. The man delivered the cat to the Senda Verde Wildlife Conservation Center northeast of La Paz.
According to National Geographic, a biologist was contacted by the center Paola Nogales-Ascarrunziinwho was told that a “strange cat” had been delivered to the center.
Nogales-Ascarrunz, who heads the feline research program in Bolivia, thought the cat was too small compared to a normal domestic cat. At first, he assumed that the cat belonged to one living in Brazil, for example Leopard tiger – to the sport.
For years along Nogales-Ascarrunz, however, began to doubt his species identification, as the fur patterns of the male Senda Verde cat were much larger than Leopard tiger – individuals he had seen, he tells National Geographic.
It took several more years for Nogales-Ascarrunz and his research colleagues to have the cat officially defined as its own species. Researchers report a new Leopardus tilcayo – species Current Biology in an article published in the scientific journal on Thursday.
A 10-year-old Tigrino male previously lived with a Bolivian family.
One of the study’s authors, biologist Paola Nogales-Ascarrunz, pictured with a tiger cat named Tigrino at the Senda Verde Wildlife Conservation Center in Bolivia in September.
So far researchers have analyzed two living Leopardus tilcayo representative of the species. One of them is a 10-year-old male named Tigrino, who still lives in the Senda Verde Wildlife Conservation Center.
Tiger cats in the genus Leopardus were previously considered to be one and the same species, but genetic studies have later shown that there are at least five species of tiger cats, one of which has now been identified Leopardus tilcayo
About 1.4 kilos Leopardus tilcayo is smaller than an ordinary domestic cat, says Reuters.
Bolivia’s mountain forests and the cat species that live in them are threatened by, among other things, growing agriculture, mining and forest fires.
“There are many species in the world that have yet to be discovered. They are in danger of disappearing before we even find them,” said one of the study’s authors, an evolutionary biologist Eduardo Eizirik for Reuters.