Instantiating interfaces in Java

Question

I have this interface:

public interface Animal {     void Eat(String name); } 

And this code here implements the interface:

public class Dog implements Animal {     public void Eat(String food_name) {         System.out.printf(food_name);     }          public static void main(String args[]) {         Animal baby2 = new Dog(); // <- this line         baby2.Eat("Meat");     } } 

My question is, why does the code work? An interface cannot be instantiated. Yet in this case, interface was instantiated (marked with the comment).

What is happening here?

Answer 1

No it is not - you are instantiating a Dog, but since a Dog is an Animal, you can declare the variable to be an Animal. If you try to instantiate the interface Animal it would be:

Animal baby2 = new Animal(); 

Try that, and watch the compiler scream in horror :)