The animal on the cover of Learning Python, Sixth Edition, is a wood rat (Neotoma muridae). The wood rat lives in a wide range of conditions (mostly rocky, scrub, and desert areas) over much of North and Central America, generally at some distance from humans. Wood rats are good climbers, nesting in trees or bushes up to six meters off the ground; some species burrow underground or in rock crevices or inhabit other species’ abandoned holes.
These grayish-beige, medium-size rodents are the original pack rats: they carry anything and everything into their homes, whether or not it’s needed, and are especially attracted to shiny objects such as tin cans, glass, and silverware.
Many of the animals on O’Reilly covers are endangered; all of them are important to the world.
The cover illustration is by Karen Montgomery, based on a 19th-century engraving from Cuvier’s Animals. The series design is by Edie Freedman, Ellie Volckhausen, and Karen Montgomery. The cover fonts are Gilroy Semibold and Guardian Sans. The text font is Adobe Minion Pro; the heading font is Adobe Myriad Condensed; and the code font is Dalton Maag’s Ubuntu Mono.