Let's imagine you and your friends (plants and animals) are at a movie theater, trying to decide which movie (or 'evolutionary path') you all want to watch. But here's the thing: your friends can't remember which movie they watched last time! Now, a method called cladistics is like the cinema employee who remembers everyone's past movie preferences and can suggest the most likely movie for your group to enjoy. Sound fun, right? Let's dive into it!

Cladistics is a method used to investigate if the classification of groups (like different kinds of plants and animals) matches with their evolutionary relationships. How? By analyzing their genetic sequences (kind of like their DNA fingerprint). Since the 1990s, it's been easy to find these sequences, and it's like a trip down memory lane for every species.

🌳 Fun Fact: Cladistics often confirms that traditional classification matches the most likely evolution path. But it's like that plot twist in a movie - sometimes, a species doesn't belong to the group we thought it did!