Update on June 1, 2020: Vandals have broken into Fauna Andina and shot a guanaco, a close relative of the llama, according to founder Fernando Vidal Mugica. Although the facility's eight güiñas are safe, this break-in follows one last week, when three pudu, a species of deer, were killed. Another two guanacos are missing. The perpetrators have threatened Vidal Mugica, he says, because they do not support the goals of the wildlife reserve, and want to use the land for other reasons. At least one of them had donated land to the reserve and wants it back, he says. Vidal Mugica is working with the police.
Tiptoeing through scrubby woodlands and fern-rich rainforests in Chile and a sliver of Argentina is a tiny feline called the güiña.
Half the size of a house cat, with a bottlebrush tail and a cartoon-cute face striped with black, the güiña holds the record for smallest wildcat in the Americas. Its petite stature—just under six pounds—combined with its extreme shyness and scientific obscurity means most people don’t even know it exists.
Until now.
The güiña, named Pikumche, marks the 10,000th animal in National Geographic’s Photo Ark, a quest by photographer Joel Sartore to document every species living in zoos and wildlife sanctuaries around the world.
As with most of the planet's 33 small wildcat species, the güiña, whose
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