How do I make the method return type generic?

Question

Consider this example (typical in OOP books):

I have an Animal class, where each Animal can have many friends.
And subclasses like

Answer 1

Here is the simpler version:

public  T callFriend(String name) {
    return (T) friends.get(name); //Casting to T not needed in this case but its a good practice to do
}

Fully working code:

    public class Test {
        public static class Animal {
            private Map friends = new HashMap<>();

            public void addFriend(String name, Animal animal){
                friends.put(name,animal);
            }

            public  T callFriend(String name){
                return (T) friends.get(name);
            }
        }

        public static class Dog extends Animal {

            public void bark() {
                System.out.println("i am dog");
            }
        }

        public static class Duck extends Animal {

            public void quack() {
                System.out.println("i am duck");
            }
        }

        public static void main(String [] args) {
            Animal animals = new Animal();
            animals.addFriend("dog", new Dog());
            animals.addFriend("duck", new Duck());

            Dog dog = animals.callFriend("dog");
            dog.bark();

            Duck duck = animals.callFriend("duck");
            duck.quack();

        }
    }