How does numpy do this?

[buran]

There is missunderstanding

Look this example

import numpy as np 

spam = np.array([[2, 0], [5, 9]])
eggs = [[2, 0], [5, 9]]

#print type
print(type(spam))
print(type(eggs))

# print both
print(spam)
print(eggs)

# compare dir()
print(dir(spam))
print(dir(eggs))

Output:
<class 'numpy.ndarray'>
<class 'list'>
[[2 0]
 [5 9]]
[[2, 0], [5, 9]]
['T', '__abs__', '__add__', '__and__', '__array__', '__array_finalize__', '__array_function__', '__array_interface__', '__array_prepare__', '__array_priority__', '__array_struct__', '__array_ufunc__', '__array_wrap__', '__bool__', '__class__', '__complex__', '__contains__', '__copy__', '__deepcopy__', '__delattr__', '__delitem__', '__dir__', '__divmod__', '__doc__', '__eq__', '__float__', '__floordiv__', '__format__', '__ge__', '__getattribute__', '__getitem__', '__gt__', '__hash__', '__iadd__', '__iand__', '__ifloordiv__', '__ilshift__', '__imatmul__', '__imod__', '__imul__', '__index__', '__init__', '__init_subclass__', '__int__', '__invert__', '__ior__', '__ipow__', '__irshift__', '__isub__', '__iter__', '__itruediv__', '__ixor__', '__le__', '__len__', '__lshift__', '__lt__', '__matmul__', '__mod__', '__mul__', '__ne__', '__neg__', '__new__', '__or__', '__pos__', '__pow__', '__radd__', '__rand__', '__rdivmod__', '__reduce__', '__reduce_ex__', '__repr__', '__rfloordiv__', '__rlshift__', '__rmatmul__', '__rmod__', '__rmul__', '__ror__', '__rpow__', '__rrshift__', '__rshift__', '__rsub__', '__rtruediv__', '__rxor__', '__setattr__', '__setitem__', '__setstate__', '__sizeof__', '__str__', '__sub__', '__subclasshook__', '__truediv__', '__xor__', 'all', 'any', 'argmax', 'argmin', 'argpartition', 'argsort', 'astype', 'base', 'byteswap', 'choose', 'clip', 'compress', 'conj', 'conjugate', 'copy', 'ctypes', 'cumprod', 'cumsum', 'data', 'diagonal', 'dot', 'dtype', 'dump', 'dumps', 'fill', 'flags', 'flat', 'flatten', 'getfield', 'imag', 'item', 'itemset', 'itemsize', 'max', 'mean', 'min', 'nbytes', 'ndim', 'newbyteorder', 'nonzero', 'partition', 'prod', 'ptp', 'put', 'ravel', 'real', 'repeat', 'reshape', 'resize', 'round', 'searchsorted', 'setfield', 'setflags', 'shape', 'size', 'sort', 'squeeze', 'std', 'strides', 'sum', 'swapaxes', 'take', 'tobytes', 'tofile', 'tolist', 'tostring', 'trace', 'transpose', 'var', 'view']
['__add__', '__class__', '__contains__', '__delattr__', '__delitem__', '__dir__', '__doc__', '__eq__', '__format__', '__ge__', '__getattribute__', '__getitem__', '__gt__', '__hash__', '__iadd__', '__imul__', '__init__', '__init_subclass__', '__iter__', '__le__', '__len__', '__lt__', '__mul__', '__ne__', '__new__', '__reduce__', '__reduce_ex__', '__repr__', '__reversed__', '__rmul__', '__setattr__', '__setitem__', '__sizeof__', '__str__', '__subclasshook__', 'append', 'clear', 'copy', 'count', 'extend', 'index', 'insert', 'pop', 'remove', 'reverse', 'sort']

spam is numpy.ndarray, while eggs is list. when printed they may look similiar, but this is just similiarity in the prinrting representation. As you can see these are instances of different class and they have quite a different attributes.
And when printing ndarray it's not exactly what you show in comment in your code.