Determine the type of an object in Python

Python 2.7.2
Credit goes to this post at Stack Overflow:

type(object)

And here's the examples from the aforementioned post, provided by a poster named poke:

>>> type( [] ) == list
True
>>> type( {} ) == dict
True
>>> type( "" ) == str
True
>>> type( 0 ) == int
True
>>> class Test1 ( object ):
    pass
>>> class Test2 ( Test1 ):
    pass
>>> a = Test1()
>>> b = Test2()
>>> type( a ) == Test1
True
>>> type( b ) == Test2
True
>>> type( b ) == Test1
False
>>> isinstance( b, Test1 )
True
>>> isinstance( b, Test2 )
True
>>> isinstance( a, Test1 )
True
>>> isinstance( a, Test2 )
False
>>> isinstance( [], list )
True
>>> isinstance( {}, dict )
True