Calling a virtual function on a reference

Question

In the following code, why does the last call of eat() on the reference c return \"An animal b is eating.\" ? From my

Answer 1

Animal & c = a;
c.eat();

c = b; ///^^^
c.eat();

In C++, reference cannot be rebind to other object once it is being initialized. c is still an alias of object a, which is an Animal, therefore, you saw the output which is expected.