this post was submitted on 22 Sep 2026
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I didn’t either. I kinda assumed it was them having a group of already identified cats and then doing science-y stuff and saying “wait! This one’s different!” And poof, new species.
That's kinda exactly what happened. There were 4 known species. One cat ended up in a shelter that was not exactly like any of those, so they decided to take DNA from 35 cats from the 4 (now 5) species and showed the 5th was a separate species.