Two novel Lactobacillus strains were isolated from the faeces of a jaguar in Beijing Zoo. They were gram-positive, non-spore-forming, non-motile, rod-shaped organisms that exhibited no catalase activity. The strains fermented cellobiose, D-fructose, galactose, D-glucose, lactose, maltose, D-mannose, salicin, trehalose, N-acetyl glucosamine, beta-gentiobiose and D-tagatose. D(-)-Lactic acid was the exclusive product from glucose fermentation. The G+C content of the DNA of strain A24-2-1T was 52.7 mol %. Phylogenetic analysis based on 16S rDNA sequence similarity indicated that the strains represented a novel member of the genus Lactobacillus and were most closely related to Lactobacillus manihotivorans LMG 18010T, with 16S rDNA sequence similarity of 95.2%. The DNA-DNA relatedness between them was 13%. The name Lactobacillus pantheris sp. nov. is proposed for the novel strains, with strain A24-2-1T as the type strain (= AS 1.2826T = LMG 21017T).