What exactly classifies a paradox as a paradox?

[WingedWolfPsion]

Paradox is NOT a trait that breeds true, that's the first thing to understand about it. There are a number of theories on what a paradox is, but my favorite is this:

Chimerism occurs when two embryos fuse shortly after they begin to divide. The result is a patchwork or mosaic of two sets of DNA in a single embryo. Essentially, it is twins that have merged to become one animal. The result is an animal that appears to be put together from patches of two different animals. When one of the animals was an ivory, and the other was a yellowbelly, you get a paradox ivory.
How do you know it's not a piebald? Well, obviously, a piebald doesn't suddenly appear when you're breeding yellowbellies.

Usually, the reproductive organs in a chimera will be only from one twin or the other--so, until you breed it, you do not know whether the chimera is reproductively a yellowbelly, or an ivory. This is true of all chimeric paradoxes.

Now, it's quite likely that chimerism is not the only explanation for paradoxes, and the above won't apply to snakes that are paradox due to other causes.

By general definition, a snake is a paradox if it shows signs that it's two things at once--that it has contradictory markings. For example, an ivory should be all white--for it to have a patch of brown is genetically impossible, hence it is a paradox. BEL snakes or albinos that have black streaks, are another example--their genetics should never allow them to have melanin. It means that something in the animal--but only in PART of the animal--isn't the same as the rest of it. It has, either due to chimerism, mutation, or other cause, more than one set of genes in its body. It has patches of genes that allow it to produce colors that the rest cannot.

This is distinctly different from a piebald, that is supposed to be patches of colors and white. Now, if you had a piebald that was patches of white and color, but part of it had perfect regular patterning...that would be a paradox, because the piebald gene should smear the patterning, and it if doesn't, that means the genes there aren't piebald genes.

Hope this helped!