Inheritance

Inheritance lets you create a new class that automatically gets all the attributes and methods of an existing class — and then add or change whatever you need.

Think of it like a family: a child inherits traits from a parent, but can also have their own unique traits.

A Parent Class

Here’s a general Animal class:

class Animal:
    def __init__(self, name):
        self.name = name
 
    def eat(self):
        print(self.name + " is eating.")
 
    def sleep(self):
        print(self.name + " is sleeping.")

A Child Class

To inherit from Animal, put the parent class name in parentheses:

class Dog(Animal):
    def bark(self):
        print(self.name + " says: Woof!")

Dog inherits everything from Animal — __init__, eat(), and sleep() — without you having to rewrite any of it. You only define what’s new or different.

dog = Dog("Buddy")
dog.eat()    # Buddy is eating.
dog.bark()   # Buddy says: Woof!

Overriding a Method

A child class can replace a parent’s method with its own version. This is called method overriding:

class Cat(Animal):
    def eat(self):
        print(self.name + " is eating... slowly and judgmentally.")

cat = Cat("Luna")
cat.eat()    # Luna is eating... slowly and judgmentally.
cat.sleep()  # Luna is sleeping.  ← inherited from Animal

Cat uses its own eat() but still inherits sleep() from Animal.

Using super()

Sometimes you want to extend a parent method instead of fully replacing it. Use super() to call the parent’s version first:

class Dog(Animal):
    def __init__(self, name, breed):
        super().__init__(name)   # runs Animal's __init__
        self.breed = breed
 
    def bark(self):
        print(self.name + " says: Woof!")

dog = Dog("Buddy", "Labrador")
print(dog.name)   # Buddy
print(dog.breed)  # Labrador

super().__init__(name) lets Animal handle setting up self.name, so you don’t have to repeat that code in Dog.

Try it out