How to call the overridden method of a superclass?

java inheritance overriding
Hisham Muneer picture Hisham Muneer · Mar 27, 2013 · Viewed 79k times · Source

How can I call the eat and drink method of the Animal class with the myAnimal instance in the code?

public class Animal {
    public void eat() {
        System.out.println("Animal Eats");
    }

    public void drink() {
        System.out.println("Animal Drinks");
    }
}

public class Cat extends Animal {
    @Override
    public void eat() {
        System.out.println("Cat Eats");
    }

    @Override
    public void drink() {
        System.out.println("Cat Drinks");
    }

    public static void main(String[] args) {
        Cat myCat = new Cat();
        myCat.eat();
        myCat.drink();

        Animal myAnimal = myCat;        
        myAnimal.eat();
        myAnimal.drink();
    }
}

Output that I am getting: 

Cat Eats
Cat Drinks
Cat Eats
Cat Drinks

This is my expected output:

Cat Eats
Cat Drinks
Animal Eats
Animal Drinks

Answer

TofuBeer picture TofuBeer · Mar 27, 2013

You cannot do what you want. The way polymorphism works is by doing what you are seeing.

Basically a cat always knows it is a cat and will always behave like a cat regardless of if you treat is as a Cat, Felis, Felinae, Felidae, Feliformia, Carnivora, Theria, Mammalia, Vertebrata, Chordata, Eumetazoa, Animalia, Animal, Object, or anything else :-)

Related questions

Is there a way to override class variables in Java?

class Dad { protected static String me = "dad"; public void printMe() { System.out.println(me); } } class Son extends Dad { protected static String me = "son"; } public void doIt() { new Son().printMe(); } The function doIt will print "dad". Is there a way to …

Read More
What's wrong with overridable method calls in constructors?

I have a Wicket page class that sets the page title depending on the result of an abstract method. public abstract class BasicPage extends WebPage { public BasicPage() { add(new Label("title", getTitle())); } protected abstract String getTitle(); } NetBeans warns me with …

Read More
Java: Calling a super method which calls an overridden method

public class SuperClass { public void method1() { System.out.println("superclass method1"); this.method2(); } public void method2() { System.out.println("superclass method2"); } } public class SubClass extends SuperClass { @Override public void method1() { System.out.println("subclass method1"); super.method1(); } @Override public void …

Read More