Did you know people discover around 16,000 never-before-identified species each year? Usually about 6,000 of these are insects. Obviously, people find far more new bugs than new cats.  

Tigrino isn’t the first tilcayo tiger cat to exist. He’s just the first to be identified. The cats have existed all along. But no scientist had labeled them yet. 

It was a question of taxonomy. 

Taxonomy is the “orderly classification of plants and animals.” A Swedish biologist named Carl Linnaeus got the taxonomic ball rolling about three centuries ago. His mission: catalog and name every living thing he could find. Linnaeus came up with the naming system we use for species. For example: Leopardus tilcayo. (That’s Tigrino.) Homo sapiens. (That’s us.) Linnaeus couldn’t name every creature and plant. But he did name about 12,000. And scientists have labored to finish his work ever since.  

The more they look, the more they find. People are discovering more creatures than ever before. New plants. New fish. New fungi. New everything.  

But of course these creatures are not really new. They’re just new to us. God’s creation is vast. We could spend our whole lives studying and never learn all that the Master Artist created. Some scientists estimate that Earth has as many as 115,000 fish species and 41,000 amphibian species. But we have identified only 42,000 fish and 9,000 amphibians.  

Some scientists ask: What if aliens showed up on Earth and asked how many species we have? Their answer: We couldn’t guess. We know of about two and a half million. But there could be many more. 

What can we say with certainty? We have a great Creator. 

The man gave names to all livestock and to the birds of the heavens and to every beast of the field. — Genesis 2:20