Question

Create a class called Animal that accepts two numbers as inputs and assigns them respectively to two instance variables: arms and legs. Create an instance method called limbs that, when called, returns the total number of limbs the animal has. To the variable name spider, assign an instance of Animal that has 4 arms and 4 legs. Call the limbs method on the spider instance and save the result to the variable name spidlimbs.

Answer 1

A class is basically a scope inside which various code (especially function definitions) is executed, and the locals to this scope become attributes of the class, and of any objects constructed by this class.

Python is an object-oriented programming language, which means it manipulates programming constructs called objects. You can think of an object as a single data structure that contains data as well as functions; functions of objects are called methods. For example, any time you call len("Eric"). Python is checking to see whether the string object you passed it has a length, and if it does, it returns the value associated with that attribute. When you call my_dict.items(). Python checks to see if my_dict has an items() method (which all dictionaries have) and executes that method if it finds it.

But what makes "Eric" a string and my_dict a dictionary? The fact that they're instances of the str and dict classes, respectively. In other words,a class is just a way of organizing and producing objects with similar attributes and methods.