I just love this bit in particular. Really wonder where the name came from. Anyone know how "tilcayo" is pronounced?
In their paper, the researchers propose the cat should be known as Leopardus tilcayo, in honor of the word local people know it by. "We asked the local people, ‘Why do you call it tilcayo?’” says Nogales-Ascarrunz, who is herself from Bolivia. “And they said, ‘I don’t know! My grandpa called it tilcayo, so I call it tilcayo.” (The name does not appear to mean anything particular in Spanish or the Quechua language spoken in Bolivia.)
I just love this bit in particular. Really wonder where the name came from. Anyone know how "tilcayo" is pronounced?
It's not that interesting to me. This question is like asking "where does the name jaguar come from? No answering if you know linguistics, etymology, any ancestral languages, etc." It's a word. It...
It's not that interesting to me. This question is like asking "where does the name jaguar come from? No answering if you know linguistics, etymology, any ancestral languages, etc." It's a word. It comes from the same place all words come from.
It's interesting to me since that paragraph gives me the impression that it's not really derived from either local language. Usually local names for animals are based on similar animals or...
It's interesting to me since that paragraph gives me the impression that it's not really derived from either local language. Usually local names for animals are based on similar animals or describe them in some way, so I'm just amused by the thought of someone calling it a gibberish word and it somehow sticking.
The header video? Interpreting the body language of a wild animal is going to be iffy, but if that were a domestic cat, I would say it was comfortable and maybe being a bit of a pill. Its ears are...
The header video? Interpreting the body language of a wild animal is going to be iffy, but if that were a domestic cat, I would say it was comfortable and maybe being a bit of a pill. Its ears are erect and forwards (anxious cats fold their ears back to protect the delicate pinna); its feet are folded under it and tail wrapped around (the classic "cat loaf" pose, from which it's definitely not prepared for sudden action); at the end of the video, it hoods its eyes (a classic non-aggression gesture, "I trust you enough not to maintain precise visual tracking of where you are and what you're doing"). A domestic cat would certainly be meowing for attention, but that's a uniquely domesticated behavior, so I'm not sure what this wild cat intends by its vocalizations here.
Again, that's interpreting the body language of a wild cat in domestic cat terms, which could be wildly wrong. But I think the relaxed posture is pretty convincing: that's not a cat that's planning to bolt in the immediate future, because it physically can't—it would have to get all its legs out from under itself first.
That position looks a lot like the position I see a lot of shelter cats in when they’ve given up trying to escape, and that wild cat looks really young and may be meowing trying to get moms attention
That position looks a lot like the position I see a lot of shelter cats in when they’ve given up trying to escape, and that wild cat looks really young and may be meowing trying to get moms attention
Per the article the cat is over a year old, so I'm not sure it would still be all that concerned with its mother (barring developmental differences of course). FWIW I did have a similar thought at...
Per the article the cat is over a year old, so I'm not sure it would still be all that concerned with its mother (barring developmental differences of course). FWIW I did have a similar thought at first (that it looked a little uncomfy), but I think I agree with @whbboyd on the body-language read as far as the relaxed eyes go. I haven't been around shelter cats much though, so I guess it's possible that can take on different meaning in that context.
So, regarding the word "discovered" ... is this a case of, IDK, let's call it scientific hubris. Like Columbus "discovered" the Americas, and never mind the millions of people already there. If...
So, regarding the word "discovered" ... is this a case of, IDK, let's call it scientific hubris. Like Columbus "discovered" the Americas, and never mind the millions of people already there. If "the locals" have known about this cat well enough to have a distinct common name for it, for generations....
OTOH, we're talking about genetic discovery. Many cases where "it looks different and people have a name for it" means just a different coloration and it's still the same species as "X" ... not even getting into cryptids and folklore and such.
At the least, this is validating that something is a previously undocumented species of feline, and that's cool. Gives me hope for the cryptids. The world still holds big mysteries.
But something about the use of that word, "discovered" rubs me the wrong way. Thoughts?
Their opening sentence also qualifies this better, I think, w/o getting into complicated parsing of what, actually, "discovered" might mean...
A diminutive wild cat that inhabits Bolivia’s cloud forest has been identified as a previously unknown species, marking the first time a new living feline species has been formally named and described in more than a century. [emphasis added]
Further on in the article...
...the study describing the newly identified species...
I mean, if The Guardian article had been the first one I read, I feel like I wouldn't even have noticed any editorial effort to come up with alternatives to saying "discovered" ... it just reads better.
Idk. I definitely get where you're coming from with the Columbus-like vibes, but I didn't read it quite the same way. I felt like it was used more to mean "recorded" than literally discovered,...
Idk. I definitely get where you're coming from with the Columbus-like vibes, but I didn't read it quite the same way. I felt like it was used more to mean "recorded" than literally discovered, especially since they explicitly write "new to science" at one point, and go out of their way to discuss the name's local origins (which necessarily includes mention of how people have been seeing the animal for generations). I could be wrong, but I don't think it's uncommon to use "discovered" this way in the scientific community? Its usage in popular press articles does muddy the waters a bit though.
“Discover” is often used with local scope. For example, someone can say, “It took Bob a while to discover how to solve the water temple in Ocarina of Time”. Obviously the discovery is local to Bob...
“Discover” is often used with local scope. For example, someone can say, “It took Bob a while to discover how to solve the water temple in Ocarina of Time”.
Obviously the discovery is local to Bob - it’s a video game, someone designed the puzzle, you can’t be the first to discover it.
Can Christopher Columbus discover the Americas? Yes, in context it’s local to the European/Old World perspective.
Can scientist discover this cat? Yes, it’s local to scientific taxonomy.
Same. I don’t know what other word to use (in this case, or for the americas, etc) because the alternative is a whole sentence: “[…] it was discovered, well discovered kinda, because there used to...
Same. I don’t know what other word to use (in this case, or for the americas, etc) because the alternative is a whole sentence: “[…] it was discovered, well discovered kinda, because there used to be people there waaaay before and so it had been discovered by mankind way earlier but you know what I mean. Anyway […]”
I think "discover" has different connotations when used in relation to science, since it's used to describe when something is first scientifically described. Even then, I think "discover" still...
I think "discover" has different connotations when used in relation to science, since it's used to describe when something is first scientifically described. Even then, I think "discover" still fits in this case because it refers to confirming they're a new species of tiger cat rather than just "this animal exists". It sounds like their presence in the area was already known to scientists along with the locals, they just had no clue tilcayos were a unique species of tiger cat.
...also I really want to rave about cryptids and cryptzoology now. There are so many cryptids that are most likely based on actual animals, and there are also so many animals only seen by local populations in remote areas. If an animal is rare and reclusive enough, of COURSE scientists won't see them since they don't live there. A lot of animals avoid humans and live far from settlements, so even locals may only see a handful of them in their lifetimes after repeatedly venturing deep into the wilderness.
It's why I think cryptzoology deserves more respect. These sightings and legends generally stem from people seeing something, and that can be worth investigating. Even if the descriptions exaggerate aspects, it can still turn out to be an animal unknown to the rest of the world. Gorillas and komodo dragons come to mind as big examples, and the first platypus specimens taken to Europe were thought to be fake.
Just anecdotal ... I broadly agree about cryptids; as I said, there are still some big mysteries out there. But I took a tracking course waaay back in the day, back in the '80s. A week long, 24/7...
Just anecdotal ... I broadly agree about cryptids; as I said, there are still some big mysteries out there.
But I took a tracking course waaay back in the day, back in the '80s. A week long, 24/7 retreat in the wilderness, serious course. And just in passing, the guy teaching the course noted that there was no such thing as Bigfoot. He spent a lot of time living in, and exploring the Pacific Northwest wilderness, and he said he never saw a single real footprint (fake footprints are obvious to anyone who tracks), nor fur nor scat nor any other sign that he couldn't firmly ID as bear or moose or etc.
This was decades before everyone older than 5 had a camera in their pocket. His comments about it always stuck with me. Anything that large, requiring a large enough population to maintain the gene pool, no matter how reclusive they are, they gotta leave all kinds of signs and traces of their existence, that anyone who is trained to spot such things, it would be clear that they inhabit a region.
Because of that offhand comment from him, I still believe there are many real cryptids out there, waiting to be identified ... but Bigfoot is not among them.
Yeah, I personally don't believe in Bigfoot (though the "campy" parts of Bigfoot-related stuff can be pretty fun, always makes for fun easter eggs in media). That and some other more "recent"...
Yeah, I personally don't believe in Bigfoot (though the "campy" parts of Bigfoot-related stuff can be pretty fun, always makes for fun easter eggs in media). That and some other more "recent" cryptids feel like definite hoaxes to me, playing off hype and attention. Plenty of other cryptids though may be real in some way, just not in the way the rumors portray.
My go-to example is a story from my teacher, which I'm sure I've mentioned on this site before. As a teen he found a wild turtle with an unusual shell with a distinct ridge, and kept it as a pet for a bit before releasing it back into the pond. Years later he was on the dock alone, and saw a MASSIVE turtle with a shell as big as the dock briefly surface. He recognized it as the same turtle because of the distinct ridge. He only saw it that one time, and then never again.
His theory was that it had some sort of genetic mutation leading to gigantism, and that multiple "lake monsters" and cryptids may be similar cases of animals with rare mutations. Since it would be a single animal and not a whole species, once it died and its remains devoured/scavenged, there wouldn't be much physical evidence remaining of its existence. Just word of mouth from the few who happened to see it, leading to legends that can never be truly disproven.
I just love this bit in particular. Really wonder where the name came from. Anyone know how "tilcayo" is pronounced?
It's not that interesting to me. This question is like asking "where does the name jaguar come from? No answering if you know linguistics, etymology, any ancestral languages, etc." It's a word. It comes from the same place all words come from.
Etymology literally explains where words come from. Why reply if it’s not interesting..?
It's interesting to me since that paragraph gives me the impression that it's not really derived from either local language. Usually local names for animals are based on similar animals or describe them in some way, so I'm just amused by the thought of someone calling it a gibberish word and it somehow sticking.
Yahoo non-paywall (are they just stealing from other new sources? How do these work? No video but photo and text )
https://www.yahoo.com/news/science/articles/meet-first-cat-species-discovered-150000251.html
Gizmodo with additional photos
https://gizmodo.com/scientists-discover-first-new-cat-species-in-over-a-century-and-its-love-at-first-sight-2000812939
Awesome article, but that video of the cat is super distressing, since the cat is obviously distressed.
The header video? Interpreting the body language of a wild animal is going to be iffy, but if that were a domestic cat, I would say it was comfortable and maybe being a bit of a pill. Its ears are erect and forwards (anxious cats fold their ears back to protect the delicate pinna); its feet are folded under it and tail wrapped around (the classic "cat loaf" pose, from which it's definitely not prepared for sudden action); at the end of the video, it hoods its eyes (a classic non-aggression gesture, "I trust you enough not to maintain precise visual tracking of where you are and what you're doing"). A domestic cat would certainly be meowing for attention, but that's a uniquely domesticated behavior, so I'm not sure what this wild cat intends by its vocalizations here.
Again, that's interpreting the body language of a wild cat in domestic cat terms, which could be wildly wrong. But I think the relaxed posture is pretty convincing: that's not a cat that's planning to bolt in the immediate future, because it physically can't—it would have to get all its legs out from under itself first.
That position looks a lot like the position I see a lot of shelter cats in when they’ve given up trying to escape, and that wild cat looks really young and may be meowing trying to get moms attention
Per the article the cat is over a year old, so I'm not sure it would still be all that concerned with its mother (barring developmental differences of course). FWIW I did have a similar thought at first (that it looked a little uncomfy), but I think I agree with @whbboyd on the body-language read as far as the relaxed eyes go. I haven't been around shelter cats much though, so I guess it's possible that can take on different meaning in that context.
So, regarding the word "discovered" ... is this a case of, IDK, let's call it scientific hubris. Like Columbus "discovered" the Americas, and never mind the millions of people already there. If "the locals" have known about this cat well enough to have a distinct common name for it, for generations....
OTOH, we're talking about genetic discovery. Many cases where "it looks different and people have a name for it" means just a different coloration and it's still the same species as "X" ... not even getting into cryptids and folklore and such.
At the least, this is validating that something is a previously undocumented species of feline, and that's cool. Gives me hope for the cryptids. The world still holds big mysteries.
But something about the use of that word, "discovered" rubs me the wrong way. Thoughts?
Addendum: The Guardian does it better -- New cat species identified for first time in more than a century in Bolivia (although the subheading also goes with "discovered").
Their opening sentence also qualifies this better, I think, w/o getting into complicated parsing of what, actually, "discovered" might mean...
Further on in the article...
I mean, if The Guardian article had been the first one I read, I feel like I wouldn't even have noticed any editorial effort to come up with alternatives to saying "discovered" ... it just reads better.
Idk. I definitely get where you're coming from with the Columbus-like vibes, but I didn't read it quite the same way. I felt like it was used more to mean "recorded" than literally discovered, especially since they explicitly write "new to science" at one point, and go out of their way to discuss the name's local origins (which necessarily includes mention of how people have been seeing the animal for generations). I could be wrong, but I don't think it's uncommon to use "discovered" this way in the scientific community? Its usage in popular press articles does muddy the waters a bit though.
“Discover” is often used with local scope. For example, someone can say, “It took Bob a while to discover how to solve the water temple in Ocarina of Time”.
Obviously the discovery is local to Bob - it’s a video game, someone designed the puzzle, you can’t be the first to discover it.
Can Christopher Columbus discover the Americas? Yes, in context it’s local to the European/Old World perspective.
Can scientist discover this cat? Yes, it’s local to scientific taxonomy.
Same. I don’t know what other word to use (in this case, or for the americas, etc) because the alternative is a whole sentence: “[…] it was discovered, well discovered kinda, because there used to be people there waaaay before and so it had been discovered by mankind way earlier but you know what I mean. Anyway […]”
I think "discover" has different connotations when used in relation to science, since it's used to describe when something is first scientifically described. Even then, I think "discover" still fits in this case because it refers to confirming they're a new species of tiger cat rather than just "this animal exists". It sounds like their presence in the area was already known to scientists along with the locals, they just had no clue tilcayos were a unique species of tiger cat.
...also I really want to rave about cryptids and cryptzoology now. There are so many cryptids that are most likely based on actual animals, and there are also so many animals only seen by local populations in remote areas. If an animal is rare and reclusive enough, of COURSE scientists won't see them since they don't live there. A lot of animals avoid humans and live far from settlements, so even locals may only see a handful of them in their lifetimes after repeatedly venturing deep into the wilderness.
It's why I think cryptzoology deserves more respect. These sightings and legends generally stem from people seeing something, and that can be worth investigating. Even if the descriptions exaggerate aspects, it can still turn out to be an animal unknown to the rest of the world. Gorillas and komodo dragons come to mind as big examples, and the first platypus specimens taken to Europe were thought to be fake.
Just anecdotal ... I broadly agree about cryptids; as I said, there are still some big mysteries out there.
But I took a tracking course waaay back in the day, back in the '80s. A week long, 24/7 retreat in the wilderness, serious course. And just in passing, the guy teaching the course noted that there was no such thing as Bigfoot. He spent a lot of time living in, and exploring the Pacific Northwest wilderness, and he said he never saw a single real footprint (fake footprints are obvious to anyone who tracks), nor fur nor scat nor any other sign that he couldn't firmly ID as bear or moose or etc.
This was decades before everyone older than 5 had a camera in their pocket. His comments about it always stuck with me. Anything that large, requiring a large enough population to maintain the gene pool, no matter how reclusive they are, they gotta leave all kinds of signs and traces of their existence, that anyone who is trained to spot such things, it would be clear that they inhabit a region.
Because of that offhand comment from him, I still believe there are many real cryptids out there, waiting to be identified ... but Bigfoot is not among them.
Yeah, I personally don't believe in Bigfoot (though the "campy" parts of Bigfoot-related stuff can be pretty fun, always makes for fun easter eggs in media). That and some other more "recent" cryptids feel like definite hoaxes to me, playing off hype and attention. Plenty of other cryptids though may be real in some way, just not in the way the rumors portray.
My go-to example is a story from my teacher, which I'm sure I've mentioned on this site before. As a teen he found a wild turtle with an unusual shell with a distinct ridge, and kept it as a pet for a bit before releasing it back into the pond. Years later he was on the dock alone, and saw a MASSIVE turtle with a shell as big as the dock briefly surface. He recognized it as the same turtle because of the distinct ridge. He only saw it that one time, and then never again.
His theory was that it had some sort of genetic mutation leading to gigantism, and that multiple "lake monsters" and cryptids may be similar cases of animals with rare mutations. Since it would be a single animal and not a whole species, once it died and its remains devoured/scavenged, there wouldn't be much physical evidence remaining of its existence. Just word of mouth from the few who happened to see it, leading to legends that can never be truly disproven.
If you don't already know about Hogzilla, there's a fun rabbit hole to go down.