A cat smaller than a housecat hid in Bolivia's cloud forests for a century — science just found it

It is about 18 inches long, weighs roughly 3 pounds (about 1.4 kg), and wears a light-brown coat scattered with leopard-like rosettes. Leopardus tilcayo, a tiny wild cat of Bolivia's cloud forests, has just been described as a brand-new species — the first genuinely new living cat species in more than a hundred years, since the pampas cat in 1923. Most 'new' species turn out to be old ones reclassified; this one was on nobody's list at all. It had simply been living quietly, unseen by science, in the misty forests all along — a reminder of how much of the living world still waits to be noticed.

SDG 15 · Life on land