A new wild cat species was discovered in Brazil, inhabiting forests and grasslands, according to reports this week. The new wild cat species was found within the DNA of the tigrina.
“So much is still unknown about the natural world, even in groups that are supposed to be well-characterized, such as cats,” study lead author, Eduardo Eizirik of Pontifícia Universidade Católica do Rio Grande do Sul, told National Geographic.
He added: “In fact, there are many basic aspects that we still don’t know about wild cats, from their precise geographic distribution and their diets.”
The new species was discovered after researchers looked at the DNA of several different types of wildcats in Brazil, according to the Los Angeles Times.
The findings were published in the journal Current Biology.
The Geoffroy’s cat (L. geoffroyi), the pampas (Leopardus colocolo), as well as the tigrina (L. tigrinus) were all evaluated. But researchers honed in on the tigrina, which is the size of a housecat.
They found that there was interbreeding between the three species of cat, and tigrinas and pampas cats intermixed generations ago. In the south, the tigrinas were breeding with Geoffroy’s cats, meaning there are two hybrids.
“L. tigrinus was clearly subdivided into two genetically distinct populations,” the authors wrote, according to the Times.
“Their level of genetic distinctiveness was similar to those found between different species, such as L. geoffroyi versus L. colocolo and higher than that found between the L. tigrinus NE population and L. geoffroyi for almost all markers,” they added.
According to National Geographic, the pampas cat and Geoffroy’s cat are roughly the same size, but the pampas cat looks like a larger housecat with long hair. It resides in the South American grasslands from Chile and Argentina to Peru and Ecuador. Geoffroy’s cat has a yellowish coat with black spots and dark bands on its tail and limbs; it lives in Argentina.
The tigrina looks like a small leopard and lives in mountainous forests, grasslands, and savannahs in Central and South America.
The rare northern species of tigrina will be L. tigrinus and the more common variant in the south will be renamed to L. guttulus.
“Very little was—and still is—known about this species,” Eizirik told National Geographic. “There have been some initial studies on its diet, but still most of its basic biology remains poorly known, including density, habitat use, and population trends.”
