Question

Question about why these functions return certain values. Thanks in advance.

http://pastebin.com/k5wfxp33

Answer 1

It is a process similar to the toString() method in Java, when you print an object you are basically getting a printout of its member variables rather than an execution of the object. Take a look at object.__str__(self) in the Python documentation for a more detailed explanation.

Answer 2

To expand on what @eSpeX said, look carefully at your definition of zoo(). What does it return?
Answer: nothing. A function needs a return statement to return an object. When zoo() is called, another call is made to monkey(), which returns 5 INTO THE FUNCTION zoo(), not as a result of the function.
To get the result I assume you are looking for (having zoo() return 5), you need to replace line 5 with "return monkey()".
Do you see what would happen if you just wrote "return monkey" with no parens containing arguments?

Answer 3

Does this help clear things up?