Chapter 13: Inheritance

A fluffy adult sheep and a small lamb stand side-by-side in a vibrant green pasture, both looking directly at the camera with calm expressions. — **Figure 13.1** credit: modification of work "Don't stare...only sheep dogs stare...", by Bernard Spragg. NZ/Flickr, Public Domain

Real-world entities are often described in relation to other entities. Ex: A finch is a type of bird. Similarly, classes, which represent types of real-world entities, can be related to each other.

Inheritance describes the relationship in which one class is a type of another class. Classes within inheritance relationships can inherit attributes and methods from other classes without needing to redefine everything. Thus, inheritance in object-oriented programming reduces redundancy and promotes modularity.