title: multiple ways of calling parent method in php
body: <p>At first I was confused why both of the method calls in the constructor work, but now I think I understand. The extending classes inherit the parent's methods as if they were declared in the class itself, AND the methods exist in the parent, so both should work.</p>
  
  <p>Now I'm wondering if there is a preferred way (i.e. best practice) of calling the method (via <code>parent</code> or <code>this</code>), and whether or not these are truly identical ways of executing the same code, or if there are any caveats when using one over the other.</p>
  
  <p>Sorry, I'm probably over thinking this.</p>
  
  <pre><code>abstract class Animal {
  
      function get_species() {
  
          echo "test";
  
      }
  
  }
  
  class Dog extends Animal {
  
      function __construct(){
  
          $this-&gt;get_species();
          parent::get_species();
  
      }
  
  }
  
  $spike = new Dog;
  </code></pre>