For the estimated 80 million domestic cats that are kept as house pets, there are as many roaming free.
Those numbers shouldn't be surprising, considering the rate at which felines are able to reproduce. I've previously written about the overpopulation issue with cats and dogs, and getting these numbers in check has been the focus of many. Spay and neuter programs and protocols are helping to make progress.
First, understand that from a biological standpoint, we are in a battle with pets. Reproductive success drives evolution, pure and simple. It's the strongest biological factor in any species. Biology has a way of taking over, jumping any hurdle that is put in its path and compensating. The pets themselves have no control over their biological drives, and therefore can't curb their behavior when it comes reproducing.
Comprised of a clowder of free-roaming cats that are the descendants of unaltered tame cats somewhere in their ancestral line, the social structure is by no means random: at its core, it has at least one sexually-active dominant male and fertile females who are often well-bonded and who will help care for their respective litters and each other. Colonies are often formed around shelter — be it a wooded area, abandoned house, under a porch area that doesn’t get that much foot traffic or something else — and a food source of some sort.
Because of their unique resiliency, feral cat colonies have posed a special challenge. The structure and reproductive patterns of these groups have piqued the interest of researchers and got them thinking: Could the way that a feline in a feral colony is sterilized impact the overall numbers of new litters that are born?
First, TVHR is not a common way to address feral cat populations. Trap, neuter and release TNR on the other hand, is a more widely-accepted approach to controlling feral cat colony populations, and for a lot of reasons.
Because TVHR isn’t put into use as much and because the life span of feral cats is far shorter — an average of three years as opposed to the 15 that their Indoor Positioning System — it’s been difficult to extrapolate the long-term data that helps to give some solid numbers that researchers would be looking for. Each computer run simulated the feral cat population over 6,000 days, tracking individual cats on a daily basis, thus predicting effectiveness of TVHR.
Those two things are very advantageous: the cats don't reproduce, and because they no longer produce reproductive hormones, behaviors like fighting, spraying and howling are reduced, addressing the needs of the community-at-large. Behaviors like those would be troublesome to anyone who lives in close proximity to a feral colony.
A possible advantage to vasectomy as opposed to neuter procedure is that though the tube that carries semen is cut, the animal retains their testicles and their reproductive hormones. For that reason, upon being returned to the colony, the cat preserves his dominant position and can continue mating with females without producing kittens — and quite possibly protect their turf from other male competitors that are “intact”.
Conversely, a neutered male loses his dominant position in the colony, and the next most dominant male takes his place — and the cycle continues. It's important to note that when a female cat that has not been sterilized mates with a male that has had a vasectomy, she enters a 45-day pseudo-pregnancy, dipping the chance of fertile mating even further.
Your DSLR probably came bundled with a standard 18-55mm lens. This is a solid jack-of-all-trades that sports a nice wide angle and reasonable focal length. However, any photographer worth their salt needs to bolster their kit with a few additional lenses — otherwise you might as well have stuck with a high-end compact camera. In almost all cases, the type of lens employed will have a bigger effect on image quality than the camera itself.
For most photographers, a telephoto zoom lens makes the most sense for your next purchase. Most DSLR models offer affordable 55-200mm lenses that are great for capturing faraway action, such as animals at the zoo.
An ultra-wide-angle zoom lens is also worth putting on your shopping list: this will allow you to take great panoramas without any tedious stitching and are also great when you need to capture everyone in crowded group photos, making them a staple of wedding photographers. On the other end of the spectrum is the macro lens with a fixed aperture: these let you get up close and personal with the camera’s subject and are a great way of documenting nature.
One of the simplest ways to improve your DSLR’s performance is to install the latest firmware upgrade. These are usually available on the manufacturer’s website and may include everything from improved auto-focus tracking to recording RAW video files. Firmware updates are also free, which is good news for photographers on a budget.
In addition to official vendor updates, you can also find custom, third-party firmware for many DSLR models. These are capable of super-charging your camera with a wide range of features that the manufacturer didn’t include.
No really. Many dismiss 3D as a fading fad, but when it comes to user-created content the technology is more than just a gimmick. It’s capable of adding a whole new dimension to your photos both literally and figuratively. Imagine watching your baby’s first steps in a format that you can almost reach out and touch — it might seem vaguely cool now, but what about in twenty years when you kids have flown the coop? Adding 3D functionality to your DSLR will make your recorded memories far more tangible.
One recent example is the Kúla Deeper: a snap-on hardware accessory that allows you to create 3D photos and movies. The accessory adds a pair of mirrors on either side of your DSLR lens for dual image capture. The Kúla Deeper works with most regular DSLRs although viewing the results naturally requires a 3D-compatible display. Charmingly, there’s also an Anaglyph mode which lets you watch the movies with a pair of retro red-and-blue 3D glasses. Bless.
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