Just a warm up

Hi there, this is my first entry in two years. Stay tuned, you will find some cool stuff.

As a warm up, something is kinda making me confused. We all know how sophisticated language java is. But I came across something which I believe is a design error.

If I have 2 separate classes in two different packages
package in;
public class Animal {
public Animal() {}//accessible only throw inheritance or throw the dot operator if the accessing class is in the same package
protected void eat(){System.out.println("animal");}}
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package out;
public class Horse extends in.Animal {public Horse() {}/** Override the protected method eat*/
protected void eat(){System.out.println("horse");}}
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package in;
import out.Horse;
public class BarnHorse{public BarnHorse()
{Animal a=new Horse();//calling polymorphiclly the eat method in the horse class a.eat();}}

the code compiles fine and calls the Horse version of eat and outputs "horse" although the calling class shouldn't know anything about the Horse eat version.

please share your opinion