Why does Comparator declare equals?

Question

The Comparator interface has its own equals() method. Any class will get equals() by default through Object class. What is the need to have equal

Answer 1

The equals() method in Comparator is provided to force a user implementing the Comparator interface to implement equals() with some additional rules and constraints in addition to the ones already applied on equals() from Object.

The additional rule being:

This method must obey the general contract of Object.equals(Object). Additionally, this method can return true only if the specified object is also a comparator and it imposes the same ordering as this comparator. Thus, comp1.equals(comp2) implies that sgn(comp1.compare(o1, o2))==sgn(comp2.compare(o1, o2)) for every object reference o1 and o2.