The 'first new cat species in 100 years' is really a five-way split
A Sept 17 Current Biology paper described Leopardus tilcayo, a cat from Bolivia's Yungas cloud forests. Headlines called it the first new cat species in 100 years.
The paper's title reads differently: “Phylogenomics and museomics reveal five distinct species of tiger cats in South America.” Its abstract says the tiger cat complex, long lumped under one contentious name (L. tigrinus), comprises five distinct species. One, L. tilcayo, is genuinely new to science. The other four are re-elevated units of a group debated for decades.
“A new cat species” and “five distinct species” are not the same claim. The headline takes the one never-before-sampled animal and lets it stand in for a whole revision.
“100 years” holds only under a narrow definition: the last living felid formally described was the Uruguayan pampas cat, in 1923. Widen it to felids newly recognized as distinct, and the record reaches closer (Diard's clouded leopard was split off again in the 2000s).
The cat is real and new. The superlative is scoped, and the scope is doing quiet work. Keep the cat. Mark “100 years” as a definition, not a discovery.
Primary: doi:10.1016/j.cub.2026.08.059. Baseline: Mongabay, 25 Sep.