New wildcat species has been found for the first time in more than 100 years

A new wildcat species that had been living in the forest of Bolivia unnoticed has been discovered, marking the first new living cat species in more than a century.

The feline, which is smaller than the average domestic cat, has been known to local communities in Bolivia’s Yungas forest as the Tilcayo.

Part of a group called tiger cats, which can be found across much of South America, its similarities to other wild cats meant it had been hiding in plain sight.

Now, DNA analysis has revealed that the animal, which measures 46cm long and 1.4kg in weight, is an entirely new species.

‘It’s an amazing result that we have a new species for the world,’ said Paola Nogales-Ascarrunz of Universidad Mayor de San Andres in La Paz, who led the research that identified the cat.

‘It’s amazing that there are still new species waiting to be discovered: we don’t have to go to a volcano, an island, or deep into the sea.’

Scientists have named the new species the Tilcaya cat, or Leopardus tilcayo.

The discovery began with a 10-year-old cat nicknamed Tigrino, which lives at a rescue sanctuary in Bolivia.

Dr Nogales-Ascarrunz was volunteering at the sanctuary when she noticed something unusual about the animal.

Tigrino had been found in the forest by a local resident who initially thought they had discovered a domestic kitten, but as the cat grew in size it became clear it was no ordinary house pet.

Dr Nogales-Ascarrunz had also heard reports of similar small wild cats in the dense forests of Bolivia’s Yungas region, but they had never been properly investigated.

She teamed up with researchers from around the world to investigate the tiger cat family, analysing DNA from living animals and museum specimens.

‘There’s so few records or pictures, no individual in a museum, so it was hiding because nobody was looking,’ said Eduardo Eizirik, a conservation geneticist at the Pontifical Catholic University of Rio Grande do Sul in Brazil.

Now, a new study published in Current Biology suggests there could actually be five tiger cat species rather than the three previously recognised.

That includes the newly identified Tilcaya cat, but scientists believe Tigrino is unlikely to be the only one.

Only one confirmed member of the new species is currently known, but researchers suspect others are living in the wild.

‘It is impossible to protect a species if we don’t know what it is or where it lives,’ said co-researcher Dr Caroline Sartor of the Wildlife Conservation Research Unit at the University of Oxford.

‘These are animals similar in size to a domestic cat, so you might think we would know them all by now, but this discovery shows how much biodiversity is still to be uncovered in some of the less-studied regions of the world.’

Wild cats and domestic cats all belong to the biological family Felidae, which includes house cats to tigers.

There were previously 41 officially recognised living cat species, but the latest findings suggest the true number could now be 44 or higher.