How to properly declare a self-referencing template type?

Question

How do I declare a templated type that refers to itself?

template  class Animal
{
public:
    T getChild ();
}

With

Answer 1

In this case, you need to specify some type parameter to Animal in your typename definition, or else it would be an "infinite recursion" in the type construction:

template class Animal;//you'll need this forward declaration

template  > class Animal //int is just an example
{
public:
    T getPrey ();
}