Hybridogenesis in water frogs

Okay kiddo, so let's talk about frogs. Some frogs have a special way of having babies called hybridogenesis. This means that instead of the babies being a mix of their mom and dad's genes, they only get genes from their mom.

There are some types of water frogs that do this. They have two sets of chromosomes, just like humans, but one set comes from their mom and the other set comes from their dad. When it's time to make babies, the female frog will use only her mom's chromosomes to make the eggs.

Then, she'll find a male frog from a different species and mate with him. But the male's contribution to the babies is only temporary because his genes don't actually stay in the baby frogs. Instead, they get replaced by copies of the female's mom's genes. This happens because the female frog's chromosomes can pick and choose which ones to keep and which ones to get rid of.

This might sound a little complicated, but let's think of it like baking. If you're making cookies and you have two different recipes, you might use some ingredients from one recipe and some from the other. But with hybridogenesis in water frogs, it's like the mom frog is only using one recipe and tossing out the other one completely.

And that's how hybridogenesis works in water frogs. The babies are still a little different from their mom because they have some genetic diversity from the male frog, but they're not as different as they would be if they had both mom's and dad's genes. Cool, huh?