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The animal on the cover of Managing the Windows 2000 Registry is a female or juvenile orangutan. The word "orangutan" comes from the Malay word for "man of the woods." Ancient legend has it that orangutans have the ability to speak, but choose not to because they are afraid that if humans find out, they will put the orangutans to work.

Orangutans are native to the forests of Borneo and Sumatra. Male adults have long beards and mustaches and highly developed cheek pads and throat pouches. The throat pouches are used as resonators for mating calls and calls to mark territory. Human males have a similar throat pouch, called the "Morgagnitic pouch," but it is very small in most men. It becomes well developed in trumpet players, bass singers, and Muslim prayer callers.

These great apes are almost completely arboreal. They move by swinging from one tree branch to the next, and descend to the ground only when there is no branch to swing to, or occasionally to gather branches for building sleeping nests. Because of the orangutans' method of locomotion, their arms are very strong and long, measuring up to 7.8 feet when outspread and reaching to the ankles when standing upright. Their legs, in contrast, are relatively weak. They eat primarily fruit, but will also eat bark, leaves, flowers, and eggs. They get their drinking water by scooping it out of holes in the trees.

Orangutans mate while swinging from tree branches. Infants weigh approximately 3.5 pounds at birth. For about the first year the infant is completely dependent on its mother and clings to her by entwining its fingers in her fur. If orangutan babies are orphaned, they need to be given a substitute to cling to, and they usually display great affection for their surrogate mothers. Development in the first year is similar to that of human babies.

Other than humans, orangutans have no natural enemies. However, as a result of hunting and habitat destruction, they are in danger of becoming extinct.

Mary Anne Weeks Mayo was the copyeditor and production editor for Managing the Windows 2000 Registry. Ellie Cutler proofread the book. Jeff Holcomb, Madeleine Newell, and Jane Ellin provided quality control. Mary Sheehan and Emily Quill provided production support. Bruce Tracy wrote the index.

Edie Freedman designed the cover of this book, using a 19th-century engraving from the Dover Pictorial Archive. Emma Colby produced the cover layout with QuarkXPress 4.1 using Adobe's ITC Garamond font.

Alicia Cech and David Futato designed the interior layout based on a series design by Nancy Priest. Mike Sierra implemented the design in FrameMaker 5.5.6. The text and heading fonts are ITC Garamond Light and Garamond Book. The illustrations that appear in the book were produced by Robert Romano and Rhon Porter using Macromedia FreeHand 8 and Adobe Photoshop 5. This colophon was written by Clairemarie Fisher O'Leary.