Scientists Discovered The First New Cat In 100 Years, Which Car Company Will Name A Car After It First?

I noticed my cat, Chester, was being even lordlier than usual this morning and now I know why. For the first time in a century there’s been a new member of the feline family discovered in the wild: Leopardus tilcayo, or the tilcayo tiger cat, or just the tilcayo.

In addition to explaining my cat’s exaggerated haughtiness, it’s also great news for carmakers. You know how many cars are named for cats? Basically, all of them. It may be a dog-eat-dog world out there, but when it comes to actually naming cars, marketers way prefer to give cars a feline moniker than a canine one.

It’s probably why all the good names for cats large and small have been used. In addition to the entire Jaguar brand, there’s the Cougar, Lynx, and Bobcat. Those are all just cat names for cars from the Mercury brand. If you weren’t running a Cobra in the ’60s you might be running a Cheetah, or maybe a Sunbeam Tiger. At the same time, no one would look down at you for showing up in a Buick Wildcat.

The one thing all these names have in common is that they’re all performance-oriented vehicles (ok, not every variant of the Lynx is sporty). There’s just something about the way a cat moves that screams fast automobile.

Meet The Tilcayo

 

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The Tilcayo is a small wild cat species discovered by researcher Paola Nogales-Ascarrunz, who runs a Bolivian conservation program called Programa de Investigación de Félidos Bolivia that focuses on local felines. There’s a report from NBC News that has an interview with the scientist that explains how she found it:

Leopardus tilcayo might have continued to escape notice if not for Nogales-Ascarrunz’s sharp eyes. She volunteers at a wildlife rehabilitation center near La Paz called the Senda Verde Wildlife Sanctuary.

“I saw this cat. It was really, really small, and I couldn’t believe how small it was,” Nogales-Ascarrunz said. “I thought it was a kitten.”

The cat had been brought in by a man living in a community in the forest near La Paz who had mistaken the cat for a domestic kitten, according to details recorded by the sanctuary. He had fed the animal noodles, rice and eggs, only to realize it was wild and that he could not take care of it. So he brought it to the sanctuary.

Right off the bat, good on that guy for realizing it wasn’t just a house cat and taking it somewhere to be taken care of once he realized his mistake. I don’t blame him for taking in the kitten, as it’s smaller than a normal house cat and absolutely adorable. While some new species of cats are occasionally found, the report notes, it’s usually from doing a genetic analysis of already discovered animals. To find something entirely brand new that scientists weren’t aware of in the wild is extremely rare, and it seems this species broke off from other felines in the area some 1.4 million years ago.

The name for the cat is from a local indigenous language, and no one seems to know for sure exactly what it means. To me it means … car. There are some photos of it from National Geographic above, and more in the publication’s big feature on the discovery.

Who Should Claim The Tilcayo Name?

I think there are a lot of ways to go with this newly discovered member of our big earthly family. An obvious one would be a race car, as there seem to be a lot more new race cars than regular sports cars. Formula E was a good source of new car names, as you can see with the team DS Techeetah.

Mercury is probably history’s biggest fan of cat-based car names, so it’s a bummer the brand isn’t around anymore. Could Ford use this as an excuse to revive the company as a limited-run sports car maker? Probably not, though perhaps the rumored Mustang Raptor could be the Mustang Tilcayo?

China is coming out with new models every year, so maybe a Chinese brand? For some reason, Ora dropped the Funky Cat name, so it no longer deserves the honor. BYD loves naming its cars after animals (it has an entire Ocean Series with aquatic creature names) and is investing heavily in South America.

Whichever brand ends up claiming the name first, I do think it’s only right that they spend some money with local organizations to protect the habitat of this fine creature. While it’s unknown how many tilcayos there are, it’s almost certainly a creature at risk of extinction and in an area that’s already under pressure from development.

What do you think? What should the first tilcayo be?

Top photo: Current Biology/Paola Nogales-Ascarrunz,