All the wildcats (which basically include domestic cats) are very closely related based on my understanding. Even the whole box thing is related to a lot of wildcats having a liking for caves.
This particular one was actually being kept in a house because someone confused it for a "pretty housecat". After a while, the owner realized it didn't want to be tamed and contacted someone for help.
Also, it's the only known one in existence. Hard to start a breeding program unless they find more.
FTFA: "The man took the animal home, believing it to be a domestic breed. But after about a year of living with the clearly wild animal, he realized it would be better off at a sanctuary."
There's a YouTube (and other) channel out there about a guy and his (I use the possessive with caveats) coyote (named Weave). His motto is "Anything can be a pet if you don’t mind getting bit."
I think the lady that got mauled to death in 2018 at the lion preserve that guy works at might disagree with you if she hadn’t been y’know, killed by a lion.
People also get mauled by dogs yet we don't consider that to mean that they can't be domesticated. A domesticated animal is still an animal and if its big enough to kill you can coommon enough then some people will be killed by it.
Cats are not really domesticated. I've heard various terms but semi-domesticated probably serves. They're very adaptable but not pack animals. You're sort of safe with house cats because they're small. You get less safe as the body weight goes up the scale.
It’s funny to hear they are not pack animals. I’m sure that is technically the case, especially in the wild, but my house cats definitely cling to me and follow me around like I am their leader. They groom/fight to try to establish a hierarchy below me, and when my partner comes home from work immediately switch allegiance to her, who they clearly see as the dominant mammal in the house.
They don’t go outside (they can’t really, it’s too busy by the road here and they’d decimate the wildlife, but I live with it because ultimately we’re doing them a huge favor by giving them a home, post-rescue) so I am sure that has something to do with it. Perhaps infantilism is keeping them in this pack headspace? But even then my mother’s cat — rural, murderous, tough tabby tom — treats her like a god and the rest of us as an annoyance.
As I wrote, they're adaptable. But there's a difference between true pack animals with an established hierarchy and being solitary but being open to other cats and species. Certainly, some cats are more pack-like (lions) and others are, or are more open to, being largely solitary.
I have 2 cats that are sisters. They have a very interesting dynamic. There isn't a fixed dominant sibling, they switch back and forth.
They antagonise each-other most of the time, but they also support each other in times of stress. If one goes to the vet and the other doesn't, the initial reaction is hissing and being a dick. Then, after a few minutes, it's licking and comforting.
I don't like to anthropomorphise too much, but they definitely look out for each-other. Equally, they definitely annoy each-other.
My newest cat started as a stray. Cautious around humans, but not feral. He was hanging around a lot, so of course I started giving him food because I’m a sucker that way. He disappeared for a couple months, then showed up injured from a fight one day, so we took him to the hospital and ended up keeping him in the garage for a few days to recover. We also did the usual due diligence to locate an owner.
The rest, of course, is history. Now he’s a big 20lb goober of a cat who is positively enamored with my wife. The feeling is mutual.
There was a farm nearby where a mother cat died and all but two kittens died from hunger afterwards. We adopted one, my wife fed the kitten (which was way underage for adopting) with bottle.
Now she has been with us for years. She’s very loyal to me, dismissive to aggressive to anyone else. Not sure why me and not my wife, but hey :)
She basically sleeps next to me all the time, both when I work from home or at night. She’s 14 now, no medical issues.
I've watched a lot of horror shows that had no effect on me. But this one wasn't a horror show, it was for real. I found it very disturbing. I couldn't believe what I was watching.
If they do not have a developed prefrontal cortex acting as a filter from instinct to action, they will be nice or calm for a long time - until the whim occurs and they will act violently. Maybe just for a fraction of a second. And at that point, their strength and natural weapon will make a whole difference.
I remember seeing a wildcat in a sanctuary in Costa Rica with a similar story (the kittens looked like housecat kittens, so someone adopted them, but the adult cat's behavior was different enough to be really challenging). I've been trying to remember the exact species I saw there (maybe an oncilla?), but apparently there are several kinds of wildcat fairly easily mistaken for housecats as kittens.
I think not all of them categorically refuse to be pets, but they're noticeably more aggressive and less affectionate compared to housecats.
> This particular one was actually being kept in a house because someone confused it for a "pretty housecat". After a while, the owner realized it didn't want to be tamed and contacted someone for help.
I mean, the dude tried to feed it "noodles, rice, and eggs" so I'm not sure if he'd be able to tame my very own house cat, even starting from the house cat's current stage of being entirely tamed.
That's not always the case. Some feral cats from colonies that are TNRed are found to be very receptive to humans and instead of returned sometimes offered for adoption instead of returned (the R in TNR)
However these come from a centuries-long bloodline of house cats of course. A species that's never been domesticated is very different.
Female orange tabby cats are less common than males though, for much the same reason. They have to get the orange genes from both parents otherwise they are just calico.
The same is true of black cats, the other way around. There are fewer orange (or black) female cats because female cats have another option of coloring - tortoise shell (no spots) or calico (with spots). Another way of phrasing it, half of the male cats are orange, the other half are black - female cats have a third option.
Many years ago I met someone who had trained his two housecats to guard the house (I am not sure what that entails). He also had two great big dogs similarly trained. For my safety he would not let any of the animals near me when I visited, but he said the cats scared him more than the dogs did.
One might argue that a guard dog may be inherently easier to bribe with a treat, or cower with bluster. A trained attack cat is a far scarier proposition, given the speed, sharpness, and number of 'utility knives' they have at the ready. Also, the dog is likely to bluster and warn you. The cat, not so much. Just go for your face.
In my youth I witnessed a smallish adult puma (mountain lion) successfully harvest a nearly adult cow elk while I was hiding. I was also hunting, but focused on a bull elk somewhat further from me. It was astonishing the speed and total quantity of violence that an 80-100lb cat delivered in only a few seconds on nearly 500lbs of prey. The cat had an alomost perfect attack angle, and the combination of slash, grip, puncture, and throttle toppled the cow elk, and it ran out of resistance in very short order. I had not even seen the puma before the attack started, and I expect a trained attack housecat would practically appear out of nowhere - from behind a couch or a curtain or off the top of a refrigerator, and it would become an 'I need stitches' situation too easily.
Its probably a good thing that most housecats are pretty much impossible to train beyond 'use a litterbox' and 'stay off the kitchen counters', if even that.
> Its probably a good thing that most housecats are pretty much impossible to train beyond 'use a litterbox' and 'stay off the kitchen counters', if even that.
My cat is very well trained to have his harness put on, since he knows it means going outside. He'll jump on the stool and give me a "hurry up already" look and a meow if I don't move fast enough.
The first time I put it on was not so... inviting, though it was a great impression of a Tasmanian devil.
As a trail runner in mountain lion country, you’re scaring me . I’ve never seen one in person and I do hope to see one, one day. But not like you’ve described!
My cousin, D. used to work in a National Park and had an international intern worker C. who decided to walk to work every morning through the park. D. had warned her to be cautious of mountain lions in that area. One morning D. was driving to work and saw her walking and not very far behind her a mountain lion making a 'stalk' approach and D. was able to get her attention and direct her attention to the mountain lion. C. hurried to D's car to ride the rest of the way to work and decided to accept the standing offer or a ride to work.
If you choose to trail run in mountain lion country, a bell may scare off bears, but may have the opposite effect for mountain lions. Stay aware, don't wear headphones or zone out on the trail.
I have seen three separate stalk and harvest events, the cow elk was my first and closest. My second was a wild burro colt. The the third was an old javelina (collared peccary). The second was by far the scariest, as the puma actually bit over the mouth and nose of the colt and suffocated it.
Fear is the correct emotion with regards to these wild animals. If you want to see one, the Arizona Sonora Desert Museum (really a zoo, in spite of the name) is the best and safest way I know about. I would never willingly try to find one in the wild unless i had a hunting permit for one, and I'm not inclined to do that.
Since this cat is Bolivian, they would be jaguar spots, rather than leopard ones.
The conquistadors referred to the jaguars as "tigers" - they certainly aren't lions - and that custom stuck around for long enough for this to become a tiger cat!
I've heard that my whole life in the US. I think my dad taught it to me when I was really young, because he loves cats and our neighbors across the street had some outdoor cats.
I think it has become common, but I never heard it until a few years ago. Now it's seemingly everywhere. When I was a kid, it was just "Here kitty kitty" or making a clicking noise with your tongue or something.
> making a clicking noise with your tongue or something
I still do that today, and it works better than pspspspsps. When I was young, if my cat was outside on the porch I could click my tongue and he'd come running from a half block away. What a good kitty he was.
I'm from Liverpool (70s/80s/90s), and of course I've heard "here kitty" but "pspsps" equally as common during my time in London (90s/00s), Cornwall(10s/20s), etc.
I always thought "pspsps" was a shortened form of "here pussy, pussy, pussy".
Well it seems everyone uses that! Thanks guys, I had no idea and this is so interesting to know. Now I wonder if someone has made some kind of study about it. I'll go looking.
A fun book is Bad Magic by Stephan Zielinski. Kind of an awkward one to find since it's a common title from a while back (2004) at the very start of urban fantasy... and the author didn't appear to have written anything else.
At one point in the book, several of the characters are in South America looking for a jaguar. They ask the synesthetic mage of their group (each character has a different magical background)...
“Got anything to call a jaguar?”
Rider purses his lips. “Well … there is one incantation. But I’m not sure it’ll work. Even the most skilled thaumaturges can’t pull it off more than a quarter of the time.”
Sturgeon shrugs. “May as well try it, Al.”
Rider nods. “Okay. Be quiet, everybody.” He rolls his head on his neck, holds up his arms. Takes several deep breaths. Opens his mouth. Intones, “Here, kitty kitty kitty … here, kitty…”
Chloe throws a clot of mud in his face as Rider dissolves into whoops of laughter. Everybody shakes their heads in disgust and they troop off into the green.
> 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?
The wiki article on it says it was known to locals. I think the problem is that they kept describing tilcayo, and everyone who wasn't there but was listening said "Oh that sounds exactly like an oncilla. must be a second name or something."
Yeah that's what I'm curious about. "Known to locals" is very vague, and there are a lot of situations that could fit that description. The situation you mention is probably the most reasonable concrete interpretation, but my guess is that there was a game of telephone from locals -> scientists -> journalists -> wiki, and any nuance we could read into has been lost.
> 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 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.
> A genetic analysis of 38 cats from South and Central America, including 26 individuals in the Leopardus tigrinus species complex, revealed that the tigrinus complex consists of five distinct species, including L. tilcayo, which is believed to have split off from other Leopardus species over 1.4 million years ago.[5] The study incorporated genetic material from previously unsampled tiger cats in the Guianas region, near where L. tigrinus was originally described in 1775. Jonas Lescroart, an evolutionary ecologist at the University of Antwerp, and co-lead author of the study called it "the most complete genetic study yet" of tiger cats.
The same that they use for the rest of the already known tiger cat species?! This one diverged from its closest relatives 1.3 million years ago. There are other tiger cat species that diverged later than that. Read the paper if you want to know more. You sound like there’s a >epsilon probability you, a random HN reader, found a gotcha in a paper by the experts of the field because you’re so smart that you know that the definition of "species" is sometimes fluid. Great job, I’m sure the authors don’t know that.
Could you maybe be a little bit more charitable than snarky? "Just read the paper" is not helpful when the paper is like 50 pages. It's not like I know what makes the other cats different species either. Nobody is trying to "gotcha" the researchers here, I'm just trying to understand what makes the cats a different species vs. a subspecies. We all know the definitions are fluid and I've heard of a couple in the past but I've never heard of one that solely looks at DNA divergence, so I'm pretty clueless and trying to learn something here. If you know the answer, this is not the way to share it.
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[ 2.9 ms ] story [ 79.3 ms ] threadBonus pic https://www.newscientist.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/09/SEI_...
Also, they're only 3-4 lbs!
This particular one was actually being kept in a house because someone confused it for a "pretty housecat". After a while, the owner realized it didn't want to be tamed and contacted someone for help.
Also, it's the only known one in existence. Hard to start a breeding program unless they find more.
Clearly you are not a cat person ... the question is not if it can be tamed, but how quickly it can tame the humans around it ... ;-)
Some animals are just harder to tame and remain ferocious more than others. But behaviour of animals is adaptable and most animals learn.
FTFA: "The man took the animal home, believing it to be a domestic breed. But after about a year of living with the clearly wild animal, he realized it would be better off at a sanctuary."
They don’t go outside (they can’t really, it’s too busy by the road here and they’d decimate the wildlife, but I live with it because ultimately we’re doing them a huge favor by giving them a home, post-rescue) so I am sure that has something to do with it. Perhaps infantilism is keeping them in this pack headspace? But even then my mother’s cat — rural, murderous, tough tabby tom — treats her like a god and the rest of us as an annoyance.
They antagonise each-other most of the time, but they also support each other in times of stress. If one goes to the vet and the other doesn't, the initial reaction is hissing and being a dick. Then, after a few minutes, it's licking and comforting.
I don't like to anthropomorphise too much, but they definitely look out for each-other. Equally, they definitely annoy each-other.
The rest, of course, is history. Now he’s a big 20lb goober of a cat who is positively enamored with my wife. The feeling is mutual.
Now she has been with us for years. She’s very loyal to me, dismissive to aggressive to anyone else. Not sure why me and not my wife, but hey :)
She basically sleeps next to me all the time, both when I work from home or at night. She’s 14 now, no medical issues.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roar_(film)#Injuries_and_set_d...
If they do not have a developed prefrontal cortex acting as a filter from instinct to action, they will be nice or calm for a long time - until the whim occurs and they will act violently. Maybe just for a fraction of a second. And at that point, their strength and natural weapon will make a whole difference.
I think not all of them categorically refuse to be pets, but they're noticeably more aggressive and less affectionate compared to housecats.
I mean, the dude tried to feed it "noodles, rice, and eggs" so I'm not sure if he'd be able to tame my very own house cat, even starting from the house cat's current stage of being entirely tamed.
If you don't raise them with humans since they are born, they can't be tamed.
However these come from a centuries-long bloodline of house cats of course. A species that's never been domesticated is very different.
Side bit - the wiki page for X chromosome inactivation shows a picture of a tortoise shell cat. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X-inactivation
http://messybeast.com/tricolours.htm
And white spots gets into interesting questions of embryonic cell differentiation http://messybeast.com/bicolours.htm
The "why are there large splotches of color with a calico cat compared to the much more mottled color pattern of a tortoise shell cat?"
http://messybeast.com/genetics-index.htm has a deep rabbit hole to go down (and that's for domestic cats... http://messybeast.com/wildcats-index.htm for the other cats).
you can have a calico that's not plain female but it's through random rare dna quirks. anyway, that link above i'm sharing because it's interesting.
do not underestimate cats.
In my youth I witnessed a smallish adult puma (mountain lion) successfully harvest a nearly adult cow elk while I was hiding. I was also hunting, but focused on a bull elk somewhat further from me. It was astonishing the speed and total quantity of violence that an 80-100lb cat delivered in only a few seconds on nearly 500lbs of prey. The cat had an alomost perfect attack angle, and the combination of slash, grip, puncture, and throttle toppled the cow elk, and it ran out of resistance in very short order. I had not even seen the puma before the attack started, and I expect a trained attack housecat would practically appear out of nowhere - from behind a couch or a curtain or off the top of a refrigerator, and it would become an 'I need stitches' situation too easily.
Its probably a good thing that most housecats are pretty much impossible to train beyond 'use a litterbox' and 'stay off the kitchen counters', if even that.
My cat is very well trained to have his harness put on, since he knows it means going outside. He'll jump on the stool and give me a "hurry up already" look and a meow if I don't move fast enough.
The first time I put it on was not so... inviting, though it was a great impression of a Tasmanian devil.
lol moment was when we with a girlfriend playfully fell down on sofa, but the then master-of-house siberian 6kg cat considered that a threat to me.
he jumped ~3m claws open, smashed a desk top lamp, shredded the gfs' top and basically opened up her back before I could stop him.
!!!
Those claws would weigh more than 6kg!
https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/two-attacked-by-co...
Getting old now, so walking in the woods alone is something I don't do anymore, even though things are a lot more developed nearby.
If you choose to trail run in mountain lion country, a bell may scare off bears, but may have the opposite effect for mountain lions. Stay aware, don't wear headphones or zone out on the trail.
I have seen three separate stalk and harvest events, the cow elk was my first and closest. My second was a wild burro colt. The the third was an old javelina (collared peccary). The second was by far the scariest, as the puma actually bit over the mouth and nose of the colt and suffocated it.
Fear is the correct emotion with regards to these wild animals. If you want to see one, the Arizona Sonora Desert Museum (really a zoo, in spite of the name) is the best and safest way I know about. I would never willingly try to find one in the wild unless i had a hunting permit for one, and I'm not inclined to do that.
Some breeds like Bengals can actually be trained a bit to do things like fetch and roll over. But the common house cat not so much no.
Someone has been typing quickly...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tilcayo_tiger_cat
Still needs some work!
(Maybe a few years ago, I might've thought "great Photoshop job" instead...)
Great, so people will find a way to have it as their pet in horrible living conditions.
Also an amusing disjoint between it being called "tiger" cat but having leopard spots. At least the latin name is more on point.
The conquistadors referred to the jaguars as "tigers" - they certainly aren't lions - and that custom stuck around for long enough for this to become a tiger cat!
The same with cats. They can cross breed and only differ in color and spots on fur!
No idea why it worked. It's terrifying.
I still do that today, and it works better than pspspspsps. When I was young, if my cat was outside on the porch I could click my tongue and he'd come running from a half block away. What a good kitty he was.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plosive
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sibilant
I mean I don't doubt you, I just thought Brits just say "here kitty kitty" because that's what I usually see in movies and TV shows and so on.
It's funny what you miss when you're not embedded in the culture of a place since birth...
I always thought "pspsps" was a shortened form of "here pussy, pussy, pussy".
(and for some Australians some of the time, "ps ps fuckin ps, ya cunting cat!" of course. ;- ) )
Tch tch tch
(is there a francophone different one?)
They do ttttt (tongue at top of mouth clicking), kissing noise (as a non frank lol), or 'minou minou minou' (mimicking meow) to summon cats
At one point in the book, several of the characters are in South America looking for a jaguar. They ask the synesthetic mage of their group (each character has a different magical background)...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kodkod#/media/File:Leopardus_g...
Personally I thought the internet would have been a bigger threat to their readership.
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?
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 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.
-Wikipedia
So either they can’t have kids, or their kids can’t have kids.
There are probably other rubrics but that’s the one I’m familiar with.
In this case I think I read that this animal has a different chromosome count than its siblings? Which would make reproduction basically impossible