Hybridogenesis

Imagine you have two big buckets full of LEGO blocks. One bucket has red blocks, and the other has blue blocks. Now, let's say you want to make a new bucket with purple blocks.

When you mix the red and blue blocks together, they make purple blocks. This is kind of like how animals can sometimes breed with each other and create new offspring that have a combination of traits from their parents.

Now, let's imagine that instead of just mixing the red and blue blocks together, you only take some of the red blocks and use them to build the base of the new bucket, and then add some blue blocks on top.

This is a bit like what happens in hybridogenesis. In this process, a female animal from one species mates with a male from a closely-related species. But then, instead of just having an offspring with traits from both parents, the mother "steals" some of the father's DNA and uses it to create a new offspring that is only partially related to the father.

It's kind of like if you built your purple LEGO bucket by starting with the red blocks as the base, but then decided to only use some of the blue blocks to build the rest of the bucket.

So, in hybridogenesis, the new offspring has some traits from both parents, but also has some DNA that is only from the mother. This makes them different from either parent species, and can sometimes lead to new species forming over time.