{"id":790886,"date":"2026-10-03T17:30:14","date_gmt":"2026-10-03T17:30:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/790886\/"},"modified":"2026-10-03T17:30:14","modified_gmt":"2026-10-03T17:30:14","slug":"a-tiny-cat-in-bolivia-is-changing-what-scientists-know-about-wild-cats","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/790886\/","title":{"rendered":"A tiny cat in Bolivia is changing what scientists know about wild cats"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/134654480.jpg\" alt=\"\"\/><\/p>\n<p>Genetic research has identified five distinct tiger cat species in South America. It has also prompted closer scrutiny of margays and pampas cats, while penguin, octopus and mouse discoveries show how fieldwork and museum collections continue to reshape wildlife records<\/p>\n<p>A small wild cat from Bolivia\u2019s Yungas cloud forests has been formally described as a new species \u2014 the first living member of the cat family to receive a new scientific description in more than a century. Called the tilcayo, it weighs about 1.4kg, less than an average house cat, and has a light brown coat marked with dark, irregular spots. People living in the region already had a name for it.<br \/>One male, nicknamed Tigrino, helped researchers work out what they were looking at. A local resident found him as a cub in 2016, and he was later taken to the La Senda Verde wildlife sanctuary. Researchers initially thought he was a known type of tiger cat \u2014 a group of small, spotted wild cats found in the Americas. But his features did not quite match. A DNA comparison showed that he belonged to a separate species, which scientists named Leopardus tilcayo.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Genetic research has identified five distinct tiger cat species in South America. It has also prompted closer scrutiny&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":790887,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[260313,260314,260315,260312,90,260310,56,54,55,260311,4407],"class_list":["post-790886","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-wildlife","tag-cat-family","tag-genetic-comparison-of-cats","tag-la-senda-verde-wildlife-sanctuary","tag-leopardus-tilcayo","tag-science","tag-tilcayo","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom","tag-wild-cat-species","tag-wildlife"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/790886","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=790886"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/790886\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/790887"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=790886"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=790886"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=790886"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}