Distinctive covers complement our distinctive approach to technical topics, breathing personality and life into potentially dry subjects. The animal on the cover of JavaScript Application Cookbook is a hippopotamus. A native of several regions in Africa, the hippo makes its home in rivers and their bordering grasslands. Hippos leave the water to eat at night. Their vegetarian diet consists mostly of grass, up to 150 pounds a day, as well as some water plants and fallen fruit.
Hippos can live to be forty years old.
Its body is covered in a relatively hairless, gray-brown skin that secretes a reddish oil, often mistaken for blood, to keep the skin moist. A hippo's nostrils, ears, and eyes are situated close to the top of its head so that it can breathe, hear, and see, yet be almost fully submerged when it's swimming or walking on the riverbed. Several native marsh animals frequently rest on the backs of hippos in the water, including crocodiles, turtles, and birds.