yeah at first they thought it’s just a weird oncilla, but now you can get genetic testing done quickly and cheaply and now it turns out that it’s something closer to 6 species and not one even if they look similar
Of course they did. “Civilized” people like to think they discovered stuff that many people have known about all along. For instance, the Western Hemisphere.
The tilcayo was already known to local communities; however, its visual appearance is extremely similar to that of other tiger cat species and the tilcayo had not been understood to be genetically distinct until this study revealed so.
Publications on Bolivian fauna predating 2026 associate the term tilcayo with Leopardus tigrinus.[6
What was thought to be single species turned out to be five species on closer investigation, and locals only ever see the one proper to the area. Having different names for the same animal in different places isn’t unusual
Very cute! Apparently the locals already knew about the existence of this cat:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tilcayo_tiger_cat
yeah at first they thought it’s just a weird oncilla, but now you can get genetic testing done quickly and cheaply and now it turns out that it’s something closer to 6 species and not one even if they look similar
Of course they did. “Civilized” people like to think they discovered stuff that many people have known about all along. For instance, the Western Hemisphere.
wiki says:
What was thought to be single species turned out to be five species on closer investigation, and locals only ever see the one proper to the area. Having different names for the same animal in different places isn’t unusual