{"id":341,"date":"2026-06-30T00:23:56","date_gmt":"2026-06-29T16:23:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/artchiee.site\/?p=341"},"modified":"2026-06-30T23:37:08","modified_gmt":"2026-06-30T15:37:08","slug":"the-adorable-clouded-tiger","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/artchiee.site\/index.php\/2026\/06\/30\/the-adorable-clouded-tiger\/","title":{"rendered":"The adorable clouded tiger"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-full\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"616\" height=\"522\" src=\"https:\/\/artchiee.site\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/Screenshot-2026-06-30-002214.png\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-342\" srcset=\"https:\/\/artchiee.site\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/Screenshot-2026-06-30-002214.png 616w, https:\/\/artchiee.site\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/Screenshot-2026-06-30-002214-300x254.png 300w, https:\/\/artchiee.site\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/Screenshot-2026-06-30-002214-440x373.png 440w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 616px) 100vw, 616px\" \/><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">ByJason Bittel<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Published April 23, 2024<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Most people are all too familiar with the lions, tigers, and other big cats of the world. But tiger-cats, which are about the size of a house cat and roam from Costa Rica to Argentina?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Truth be told, even experts get them confused.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Until now, only two tiger-cat species have been formally recognized\u2014the northern tiger cat, or oncilla (<em>Leopardus tigrinus<\/em>) and the southern tiger cat, or southern tigrina (<em>L. gutullus<\/em>), which also has three subspecies.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">But about 14 years ago,&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/sis.sig.uema.br\/sigaa\/public\/docente\/portal.jsf?siape=6556\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Tadeu de Oliveira<\/a>&nbsp;received an email that made him rethink everything he knew about these small predators.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cI can even pinpoint the date,\u201d says de Oliveira, a wildlife conservationist at the State University of Maranh\u00e3o in Brazil. \u201cIt was June 22, 2010.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The message came from researcher&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.usfq.edu.ec\/en\/profiles\/rebecca-zug\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Rebecca Zug<\/a>, who was working on spectacled bears in Ecuador and had caught some camera trap photos of a curious-looking kitty with a long tail and loads of spots\u2014a tiger-cat unlike any other de Oliveira had ever seen.&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.nationalgeographic.com\/animals\/article\/meet-guina-mystery-cat-vulnerable-extinction\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" target=\"_blank\"><em>(Read about the g\u00fci\u00f1a, a six-pound &#8220;mystery cat.&#8221;)<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cI was mesmerized by what I saw,\u201d he recalls.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Fast forward to 2024, and de Oliveira has teamed up with more than 40 small cat researchers to formally propose a new species known as the clouded tiger-cat (<em>L. pardinoides<\/em>), which would bring the total number of tiger-cat species to three.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The team examined 1,400 records from museums and camera traps, allowing them to compare sizes, shapes, and color patterns among tiger-cats, as as well as determine the habitats where each species lives. They also&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/academic.oup.com\/mbe\/article\/40\/12\/msad255\/7439459?login=false\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">analyzed the clouded tiger-cat\u2019s genetics to make a make an airtight case for its species status<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Despite the happy news of a new species,&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.nature.com\/articles\/s41598-024-52379-8\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">published recently in&nbsp;<em>Scientific Reports<\/em><\/a>, the scientists likewise uncovered a grim reality\u2014each tiger-cat exists in far fewer places than once believed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cThey\u2019ve lost more than 50 percent of their original area,\u201d explains de Oliveira. \u201cThe red alert has been turned on.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>ByJason Bittel Published April 23, 2024 Most people are all too familiar with the lions, tigers, and other big cats of the world. But tiger-cats, which are about the size of a house cat and roam from Costa Rica to Argentina? Truth be told, even experts get them confused.&nbsp; Until now, only two tiger-cat species [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":342,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-341","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/artchiee.site\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/341","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/artchiee.site\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/artchiee.site\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artchiee.site\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artchiee.site\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=341"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/artchiee.site\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/341\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":343,"href":"https:\/\/artchiee.site\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/341\/revisions\/343"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artchiee.site\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/342"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/artchiee.site\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=341"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artchiee.site\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=341"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artchiee.site\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=341"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}