A new species of cat has been named, and it may be endangered. The clouded tiger cat (Leopardus pardinoides) is a small cat that lives in high-altitude cloud forests in Central and South America.

Of the roughly 40 species of cats, more than 30 species are small cats that are not well known to the public. Small cats roam the forests, deserts, savannas, and wetlands of the world and are important predators, keeping rodents and other small animals in check.
Tiger cats (also called oncillas) range across the Americas from Costa Rica to Bolivia and Argentina. They are about the size of a house cat. Tiger cats live in tropical forests and hunt rodents, birds, insects, and reptiles.
It is not exactly clear why they are called tiger cats, when they do not really look like tigers, nor are they closely related to them within the cat family. The spotted pattern of the tiger cat helps it camouflage itself in the darkness of the forests, similar to how tiger stripe patterns do.

Until 2024 only two species of tiger cats were officially recognized: the southern tiger cat found in the Atlantic Forest of South America, and the northern tiger cat with a massive range stretching from Brazil through Colombia, north to Costa Rica and across the Andes into Bolivia and Peru.
But now there is evidence that tiger cats should be spilt into three separate species. Researchers analyzed characteristics of all the tiger cats known, including their morphology (body shape) and ecology (how they interact with their environment). In addition to differences in coat pattern, the clouded tiger cat has only one pair of teats while the other species have two pairs. The researchers concluded that tiger cat populations living in the Andes mountains and cloud forests of countries such as Colombia, Peru and Costa Rica are a separate species.
This is an illustration of what the three species look like:

The researchers also looked at where each tiger cat species might live and made a map. They determined that all three tiger cat populations have much smaller ranges than previously thought.

Tiger cats face many challenges, including habitat loss, being killed while crossing roads, and hunting by people. Tiger cats may be more vulnerable to extinction than previously thought.
Conservation work is going on across the ranges of all three tiger cat species. In Costa Rica, efforts are underway to protect tiger cats from becoming roadkill and to reduce predation on chickens, which minimizes problems between people and the cats.

David Brown adapted this story for Mongabay Kids. It is based on an article by Sean Mowbray, published on Mongabay.com: