Polar Bearcat

I decided to combine a picture of a polar bear and a cat.  They were similar in color and I thought it would be fun since I hadn't seen one online.  I took the head off of the polar bear and placed it on the cat's body to create a polar bearcat.  But don't worry, no animals were harmed in the making of this photo and I won't try this in real life.  This was just for fun and I don't think anyone would take this seriously as a new type of animal.  It was actually a lot harder to make the head match the body than I thought it would be. I matched the colors but the difference in hair was still visible.  But after using the burn tool and the dodge tool and smudging the pictures a tiny bit, I made them match well enough.  Although some people are creating new images with Photoshop and using them in their studies.  I read a few articles that documented people using Photoshop to alter their photos for studies, and that schools are about to really crack down on this.  I think image manipulation is very fun, but that it should never be used as anything beyond that.  Sure someone can adjust an image to make it better for their family or a friend but it shouldn't be used ac academic research.  This is cheating, you just have to put more effort into it.  Anyone that is caught should be punished the same as if they had been cheating on a test.  If you want to read about some of the cases where people have been caught using an image that has been manipulated, here is the citation for one of the articles that I read.

Parrish, Debra, and Bridget Noonan. "Image Manipulation as Research Misconduct." Science & Engineering Ethics 15.2 (2009): 161-167. Academic Search Complete. EBSCO. Web. 11 Nov. 2010.