Tilcayo Fever: How Bolivia's Newly Confirmed Wild Cat Brought Cash, Fan Art and Unwanted Calls

A newly confirmed wild cat in Bolivia is changing life far beyond the animal itself. Since the tilcayo was announced last month, a sanctuary, researchers and the cat's habitat have all been pulled into a surge of attention that has brought both help and new concerns.

Viral attention reaches the sanctuary

The discovery confirmed that one of the wild cats living at Senda Verde, a wildlife sanctuary about two-and-a-half hours from La Paz, belongs to a newly identified species called the tilcayo. The small, spotted cat is native to Bolivia, and genetic work found it split from other members of the tiger cat species complex about 1.4 million years ago.

For Senda Verde co-founder Vicky Ossio, the timing mattered. She had just come through seven weeks of anti-government road blockades that disrupted fuel and food supplies. The sanctuary cares for 1,200 rescued animals, including Andean bears, jaguars and other wild cats, and Ossio said she normally needs nearly 500 pounds of meat each week. During the shortages, Senda Verde got by with in-season fruit from neighbors and eggs from 60 laying chickens.

Then the tilcayo story exploded. Ossio said media calls were coming every 10 minutes, and the sanctuary later learned that a crypto campaign had brought in more than $150,000 in donations. She said the money should give the sanctuary more certainty about feeding its animals through future disruptions. Researcher Paola Nogales-Ascarrunz also said funding for small cats is usually difficult to secure, which makes the scale of the response especially striking.

Fame brings curiosity, risks and conservation hopes

Not all of the attention has been welcome. Nogales-Ascarrunz said AI-generated coverage sometimes altered her appearance to make her look white and blonde, and some posts replaced real scientists with invented male ones. Ossio also said the sanctuary's website was hit with 137 hacking attempts every 10 minutes during part of the frenzy.

There were troubling calls, too. Ossio said one person in Seattle wanted to buy the tilcayo, and another caller from a Bolivian region known for ties to drug producers asked for help identifying a similar-looking cat they had. She sees those contacts as part of a broader risk she described as mascotism, when a wild animal's popularity leads people to seek one out to keep or sell.

Still, the boom has also produced fan art, messages from around the world and an award from the governor of La Paz for Nogales-Ascarrunz and a study coauthor. A linguist has even suggested that tilcayo may come from Aymara words meaning small and paw or foot, a possible fit for a cat whose tracks are smaller than those of ocelots and margays.

Researchers are also hearing from citizen scientists sending photos of spotted cats, though Nogales-Ascarrunz said most seem to be margays. She and others hope the new visibility can do something bigger as well: build pressure against illegal gold mining in Bolivia, which uses mercury and can contaminate waterways, fish and other animals. Ossio said mining affects water near the sanctuary, and photographer Joel Sartore described it as looking like chocolate milk.