> And they said, ‘I don’t know! My grandpa called it tilcayo, so I call it tilcayo.
I'm curious if the locals knew it was distinct from other similar species, e.g. Oncilla/L. tigrinus, or if tilcayo is the locals' name for a broader set of 2+ visually similar species?
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lhakedal
A bunch of Pokémon playing cat ladies out there goes «Gotta catch’em all!»
krige
Positively tiny. Really makes you wonder what else is still out there.
Also an amusing disjoint between it being called "tiger" cat but having leopard spots. At least the latin name is more on point.
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ChildOfChaos
Be careful, they are evolving, and everyone was worried that AI was taking over.
dataflow
I don't understand how they're different species from others. By what definition of species are they different species, as opposed to (say) subspecies?
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hmokiguess
Awwwww pspspspsps kitty kitty ^_^
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0x737368
Very good news that a new species was discovered that's not a microbe or a fungus!
yegle
Desperately trying to find a video with the original meowing sound...
MostlyStable
Wow, I expected it to be a DNA based split or something like that, but a genuinely new to science mammal is pretty cool!
hugodan
This looks like AI generated
thangalin
On a related paw, Leopardus guigna (güiña) in Anticura goes by the cute name of kodkod:
> when the researchers compared complete genomes from 38 individuals across the Leopardus genus, the results showed that not only was L. tilcayo different from the other tiger cat species, but it had diverged from them around 1.4 million years ago—an evolutionary distance comparable to that between modern lions and extinct cave lions.
So around 2.8 million divergence-years. Going by wikipedia, the divergence between lions and cave lions is much less:
> Genetic analysis of ancient DNA has revealed that while closely related, it was a distinct species genetically isolated from the modern lion (Panthera leo), with the genetic divergence between the two species estimated at 500,000 to 1 million years ago.
Theoretically, that's anywhere from 18% to 71% of the divergence. (The same page also notes that fossils of this species can be about 700,000 years old, which is philosophically interesting in combination with a divergence date of 500,000 years ago.) These are "comparable" in the sense that any two numbers can be compared, but it's not something you would usually say when one of the numbers is 50% larger than the other one. Even less so when it's 400% larger.
Transformanshen
It always surprises me when people discover new animal species. These little kittens look very cute.
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swader999
That's a good looking kitty!
lofaszvanitt
It will turn out to be a domestic cat that crossbred with some wild cat species. :D
It's Leopardus tilcayo aka 'tilcayo tiger cat' and it's very cute. Wikipedia doesn't have a page dedicated to it yet.
Bonus pics: https://www.newscientist.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/09/SEI_...
https://media.zenfs.com/en/live_science_953/73a4cafd69e9e863...
https://media.zenfs.com/en/live_science_953/1fea354ba7a8db69...
https://thepeninsulaqatar.com/get/maximage/20260917_17896627...
> And they said, ‘I don’t know! My grandpa called it tilcayo, so I call it tilcayo.
I'm curious if the locals knew it was distinct from other similar species, e.g. Oncilla/L. tigrinus, or if tilcayo is the locals' name for a broader set of 2+ visually similar species?
A bunch of Pokémon playing cat ladies out there goes «Gotta catch’em all!»
Positively tiny. Really makes you wonder what else is still out there.
Also an amusing disjoint between it being called "tiger" cat but having leopard spots. At least the latin name is more on point.
Be careful, they are evolving, and everyone was worried that AI was taking over.
I don't understand how they're different species from others. By what definition of species are they different species, as opposed to (say) subspecies?
Awwwww pspspspsps kitty kitty ^_^
Very good news that a new species was discovered that's not a microbe or a fungus!
Desperately trying to find a video with the original meowing sound...
Wow, I expected it to be a DNA based split or something like that, but a genuinely new to science mammal is pretty cool!
This looks like AI generated
On a related paw, Leopardus guigna (güiña) in Anticura goes by the cute name of kodkod:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kodkod#/media/File:Leopardus_g...
https://archive.ph/cgMTM
> when the researchers compared complete genomes from 38 individuals across the Leopardus genus, the results showed that not only was L. tilcayo different from the other tiger cat species, but it had diverged from them around 1.4 million years ago—an evolutionary distance comparable to that between modern lions and extinct cave lions.
So around 2.8 million divergence-years. Going by wikipedia, the divergence between lions and cave lions is much less:
> Genetic analysis of ancient DNA has revealed that while closely related, it was a distinct species genetically isolated from the modern lion (Panthera leo), with the genetic divergence between the two species estimated at 500,000 to 1 million years ago.
( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panthera_spelaea )
Theoretically, that's anywhere from 18% to 71% of the divergence. (The same page also notes that fossils of this species can be about 700,000 years old, which is philosophically interesting in combination with a divergence date of 500,000 years ago.) These are "comparable" in the sense that any two numbers can be compared, but it's not something you would usually say when one of the numbers is 50% larger than the other one. Even less so when it's 400% larger.
It always surprises me when people discover new animal species. These little kittens look very cute.
That's a good looking kitty!
It will turn out to be a domestic cat that crossbred with some wild cat species. :D
Beautiful. Can't believe how mini and colorful.
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I for one welcome our new feline Overlords.
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Babe, wake up! New cat just dropped!