Polymorphism

Suppose we have a dog, a cat, and a duck, and we need to make each of them speak(). Without polymorphism it would look something like this:

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for animal in animals:
    if isinstance(animal, Dog):
        print(animal.bark())
    elif isinstance(animal, Cat):
        print(animal.meow())
    elif isinstance(animal, Duck):
        print(animal.quack())

Every time a new kind of animal shows up, you have to add another elif branch. Code that knows about every possible type can't grow without being rewritten.

Polymorphism is the idea of "make the same call, and let the class decide how to respond". The same loop becomes:

Python 3.13
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for animal in animals:
    print(animal.speak())

Dog.speak() returns "Woof!", Cat.speak() returns "Meow!", Duck.speak() returns "Quack!". One call, different behavior depending on the object.

Polymorphism through inheritance

The most common case: a common parent class defines the "contract" (which methods the children must have), and each child implements them its own way.

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class Animal:
    def __init__(self, name):
        self.name = name

    def speak(self):
        return f"{self.name} is silent."

class Dog(Animal):
    def speak(self):
        return f"{self.name} says: Woof!"

class Cat(Animal):
    def speak(self):
        return f"{self.name} says: Meow!"

class Duck(Animal):
    def speak(self):
        return f"{self.name} says: Quack!"

animals = [Dog("Rex"), Cat("Fluffy"), Duck("Donald")]
for animal in animals:
    print(animal.speak())
Rex says: Woof!
Fluffy says: Meow!
Donald says: Quack!

Inside the loop we never ask "what kind of object are you?" — each animal knows how to speak for itself. Add class Cow(Animal): with its own speak(), and the loop doesn't change by a single line.

Abstract classes

Often you want to be sure that every subclass actually implements the required method. For example, the base Shape class should force every concrete class (Rectangle, Circle, …) to implement area(). If someone forgets, it's better to find out immediately, not when the program is already running.

For that Python has abstract base classes in the abc module:

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from abc import ABC, abstractmethod
import math

class Shape(ABC):
    @abstractmethod
    def area(self):
        pass

    @abstractmethod
    def perimeter(self):
        pass

    def describe(self):
        # Uses area() and perimeter() without knowing how they're implemented
        return f"Area: {self.area():.2f}, perimeter: {self.perimeter():.2f}"

class Rectangle(Shape):
    def __init__(self, width, height):
        self.width = width
        self.height = height

    def area(self):
        return self.width * self.height

    def perimeter(self):
        return 2 * (self.width + self.height)

class Circle(Shape):
    def __init__(self, radius):
        self.radius = radius

    def area(self):
        return math.pi * self.radius ** 2

    def perimeter(self):
        return 2 * math.pi * self.radius

shapes = [Rectangle(5, 3), Circle(4)]
for i, shape in enumerate(shapes, 1):
    print(f"Shape {i}: {shape.describe()}")
Shape 1: Area: 15.00, perimeter: 16.00
Shape 2: Area: 50.27, perimeter: 25.13

What ABC gave us:

• You can't instantiate Shape directly (Shape() raises an error). And that's reasonable: "a shape" on its own is meaningless; you need a concrete one.
• If Circle had forgotten to define perimeter(), Python would refuse to create a Circle() at creation time, not later when some missing method gets called.

Meanwhile describe() is defined right in Shape and works for any descendant — it relies on area() and perimeter() without knowing their implementations. That's polymorphism through an abstract base class.

Duck typing

Python goes one step further: polymorphism doesn't require shared inheritance. If an object behaves the right way (has the right methods), it qualifies. People phrase it as: "if it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, it's a duck".

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class Duck:
    def swim(self):
        return "The duck swims."

    def sound(self):
        return "Quack quack!"

class Person:
    def swim(self):
        return "The person swims."

    def sound(self):
        return "Hello!"

def describe(entity):
    print(entity.swim())
    print(entity.sound())

describe(Duck())
The duck swims.
Quack quack!
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describe(Person())
The person swims.
Hello!

The describe function doesn't check whether it's looking at a duck or a person. All it cares about is that the object has swim() and sound() methods. Duck and Person share no parent class, but polymorphism still works.

This is a very Pythonic approach: instead of "describe the type", "describe the behavior". In practice it often saves you from needless layers of abstraction.

Understanding check

Which of the following is an example of polymorphism in Python?

Polymorphism wraps up the four principles of OOP. The key practical effect: code that calls methods through a shared interface doesn't need to be rewritten when new classes appear. Extensibility is built into the architecture.