multiple ways of calling parent method in php
<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>
