Paraphyly

Okay, so you know how people and animals are grouped into families or groups based on certain similarities they share, like how cats are all put together in one group or family because they have similar physical features? Well, sometimes scientists do more research and find out that some of the animals in that group don't actually belong there because they are too different from the others.

So, imagine you have a box of crayons and you group all the red crayons together because they all look the same. But then you find out that there's one crayon that's more orange than red, and you realize it doesn't really belong in the red group. That crayon is what we call "paraphyletic" - it's like it's part of the red group, but kind of different enough to not really fit in perfectly.

So, when scientists talk about paraphyly, they're just saying that some members of a group (like cats or crayons) don't really belong there because they're not similar enough to the others. It's like when you're picking teams for a game, and you realize that one kid isn't really good at the sport you're playing, so they don't fit in with the rest of the team.