# Sudden Aggressive Rat



## RubyLou (Aug 9, 2016)

Hi! Really hoping to find some help with my rats as I don't know what else to do! (Apologies if there's one similar and I've missed it)

I have two rats that I purchased together around January so they're around 10-11 months old now. We never had any problems with fighting and they always seemed to get along well, only ever play fighting which never escalated. 

Now all of a sudden one of the rats (Fudge) seems to have become obsessed with 'stashing' his food and treats. So much so that he will take food and treats off of the other one (Scamp) to stash or like today, simply eat it himself. Scamp has never challenged Fudge to be the alpha rat, he's quite happy doing his own thing although he will fight back sometimes. Also over the past month they've been fighting a lot and Scamp has been left shaking and scared and just generally depressed. Up to this point though, there had never been any blood. Until the past two weeks.

I wasn't around to see how Scamp got his first injury that drew blood. I thought he might have caught himself on a twig while they were fighting and he was trying to get away. But I was around to witness the second attack. They each have a 'spaceship' one of those round things that you can hang from the top of the cage? So Scamp was in his spaceship where he had escaped to eat some food and Fudge went in there, they had a fight which resulted in Scamp having a very nasty injury on his stomach which resulted in bloodshed again (It can still be seen 4-5 days later but is thankfully healing at least) 

I have separated the two since this attack and have tried to reintroduce them over the past two days which hasn't been going well. The first time, scamp wouldn't come out of his cage and the other one was again trying to get into his spaceship and you could see that Scamp was getting worked up so I left it for the day. Today Scamp did come out of his cage but the other one was chasing him around and had his fur on end and was just generally being aggressive towards him.

I'm really at a loss as what to do now as Scamp seems to want absolutely nothing to do with the other rat. They have more than enough food, so it's not like they need to be fighting over it. I've tried giving food twice a day to split it up to see if that helps but it made no difference. Spraying of water also does nothing. Nothing in the circumstances have changed, the cage is the same, routine is the same etc.

Only things I can think of is removing houses so the rat can't stash food? Or look at getting neutered? 

If anyone has any tips or ideas I'd be really grateful, I'm totally at a loss at what to do right now and want my little guys to be happy.


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## Heyyouguys (Jun 19, 2016)

Sounds like neutering is the only option here, I'm no rat expert but rats need company and if one rat is being agressive so they can't be together then neutering makes sense. Hope nothing else happens and that you arrive at a solution


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## Rat Daddy (Sep 25, 2011)

I'd get them both out of their cage and join in the frey with them, assuming they are both bonded well to you... I don't usually cut in unless things get out of hand, but I'm the parent in my household and no one is allowed to fight beyond a certain point, and someone getting hurt is going too far. 

How are the rats during free range time and how are they treating you? Today, for the first time I saw our number 2 rat Bunny flip over out family rat Misty in a tussle over some toilet paper, then both froze and looked up at me... Like, we're just playing and then they just broke it up on their own... I didn't have to get involved, both rats know the rules and were just checking to make sure I wasn't about to cut into their fun. If it had gone any farther, you can bet I would have broken it up fast and made sure to remind the offending rat of what the household rules are...

It's actually kind of funny, mostly our rats are fighting over my attention. As soon as I call one, the other comes so as not to be left out... Basically, I'm the parent or to loosely use the term; alpha of the group, so I set and enforce the rules and keep the peace...

Is there any chance you have been spending less time with your rats lately? Are they getting enough out of cage time with you? Sometimes one rat will go alpha if he or she perceives a human power vacuum at the head of the group.

Best luck.


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## Gribouilli (Dec 25, 2015)

Neutering would fix it in most cases. I personnaly always neuter my male rats around 8-10 weeks to avoid those potential issues even though I get my rats from a breeder and not a pet store. Of course they need to be healthy, no respiratory problems at all, and you need a rat savvy vet.


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## Rat Daddy (Sep 25, 2011)

I'm not entirely opposed to neutering to fix certain hormonal aggression issues... These are a lot like mental problems humans have when their hormones get out of balance. But most normal hormonal issues can be controlled and reversed by correcting the social issues in your home that may have allowed them to go out of control. A study showed that when a rat becomes alpha his hormones increase dramatically and when an alpha rat is deposed his hormones usually reduce to normal levels. More often than not a rat that's suffering from hormonal alpha confusion, he will become aggressive towards you too. Once you back him down and take charge, which is a particularly ugly process called extreme immersion, he will return to normal after a bit of time as his hormonal levels go down. 

Neutering doesn't necessarily help with social status issues, in this case the aggression is a learned behavior. It's a normal rat that's filling the void left by the human who should be in charge and for some reason isn't there. This is normal social behavior gone wrong because a cage is not a normal rat environment. So often one rat gets neutered, then the other rat becomes aggressive and then that one needs to be neutered too and so on down the line... and then half the time the fighting stops, the rest of the time it doesn't...

Some people do neuter all of their boys for reasons other than aggression. That's their call. But some people do wind up neutering all of their boys due to aggression, while other people never neuter their rats and never have aggression issues. So either some people are always lucky to get good rats while other people are always unlucky or it comes down to management style or lack thereof. 

As a shoulder rat trainer I'm very hands on with our rats... I'm involved with almost every part of their daily lives and they can come to me pretty much whenever they want. That's not to say I follow them around the house, but I'm always available... Some folks work two jobs and have a social life and kind of have to let their rats fend for themselves a lot in their cage... this is when things have a tendency to go wrong when one rat tries to take charge. In the wild an alpha rat would have constant daily challenges to face, like finding food, defending his territory from invading rats, ducking predators, and spreading his authority among several if not many other rats. This dissipates his aggressive tendencies. In a cage with only one other rat things can get ugly.

Normally hormonal alpha confusion sets in at the age of 4 to 5 months... It would be unusual to start at around a year old. Neutering is an option that might help, but if something has changed in your household that might just as well be the cause which neutering wouldn't fix. Common precursors to social aggression issues are; the kids going off to college, someone taking a second job or starting a time consuming relationship, adopting a new pet, getting involved in a new on line game or activity, illness in the family and similar day to day issues that we don't think impact our rats. Human life goes on, and we tend to adapt pretty seamlessly but our rats don't necessarily understand when things change and like children going through a divorce they typically act out.

Best luck.


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## BlackAce (Apr 18, 2013)

RubyLou, it sounds like Fudge has increased levels of testosterone causing him to view Scamp as an intruder or as a threat to his dominant positioning. I have never needed to neuter my males because their scuffles never resulted in bite wounds. I would say the end goal here would be to lower his testosterone levels. Like others have mentioned neutering will accomplish this. You could also attempt to manage the encounters between the rats, as the intensity of rat on rat interaction could change the overall outlook. Maybe someone who has worked through this could give you more detailed information than I am able to. But I hope this problem resolves itself for you and your boys!

Rat Daddy, I have to comment on your first paragraph in your response. Rats do learn to respect their people and respond to commands if they so choose. However in all the scholarly articles I've read (that I was required to by my university before performing behavioral analysis in a rat lab), I have never come across anything called "alpha confusion". There are dominant/submissive relationships that change due to age of rats in a group, health of rats, temperament, change in territory space etc. I have never come across any article or study that suggests lack of human involvement affects how rats relate to other rats. Usually what changes is the rats' encounters with one another, is someone submitting faster or differently? Is one rat avoiding? Rats are biologically hardwired to respond to cues of other rats, not humans. Rats that show aggressive tendencies towards people usually have a highly dysfunctioning stress response systems or other such imbalances. However just because a rat is aggressive towards other rats does not equate them being aggressive towards humans (Galef,1970)(Schchepina et al 2008 )(Walsh, 1992-3) I'll see if I can find a way for you to read these sources through my university's library account, otherwise you'd have to pay for full access, which is frustrating. I'd be interested to see these studies you are referring to or where I can find them, as I've taken several classes over the course of my degree that required me to cite these sources and I haven't come across anything of what you mentioned. I'm curious as to their conclusions.


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## Rat Daddy (Sep 25, 2011)

BlackAce,

I was a psych/sociology double major at Rutgers back in the late 1970's and early 1980's and although I might be a little out of date, I read more rat studies than I'd care to remember... not that I've forgotten them either. 

First, I don't think many of those studies were in any way wrong... in fact they produced replicatable results... usually. And I mean usually because when you tried to replicate them, lots of times they didn't work... And I've seen volumes written on why they didn't... none of which usually makes it into the abstract. But suffice to say they could mostly be grouped into experimental design or experimenter error... But there was a lot more to it than that, like when a rat would rather interact with the experimenter than run the dang maze or push the dang bar... or when certain rats did things to please their experimenters... Or in other cases when the rats tried to attack the humans in the room... And yes these people shouldn't have interacted so much with their rats and their experiments would have worked better... Mostly that kind of thing happened with undergraduates and they were being done for educational purposes and the results certainly weren't published.

More recent studies indicate that rats are metacognaitve and can even be empathetic. And I believe there's a lot more good data available from the field of social psychology than behaviorists give credit to....

Good experiments are done under tight lab conditions and evaluated against control groups etc, etc... But you only get so much data from them... 

I'm not ashamed to admit I was trained in behaviorist psychology.... it was the science of the day.... Sure, I suspected there was more to the story... and that it took me years to get passed it.

I've been socializing and training rats in the real world for a very long time...

I'm not sure how you would replicate this in a lab... and yes the rat jumped into the lake and swam out after my daughter. 

https://vid.me/3edL

Or this for example... 


https://vid.me/BzNQ 

and that's a rat leading me back to the car... And evenings she would herd stoney teenagers around the park.

She would tap on the back of my neck to ask me to open a door, and point her nose up or down right or left depending on where she wanted me to go and even drag out her empty food bowl if I didn't feed her on time... She also understood several words used in novel sentences... 

So, my current model of rat social behavior includes humans in the pack/group structure. In working outdoors with rats, my rats cue on me... not each other. And they will run to me if frightened not to the highest status rat.

And heck no, I don't have a single controlled experiment done in a lab to support most of my work, but my point is that it isn't done in a lab... it's all real world. 


Please don't misunderstand me... I'm not knocking hard science. I learned a lot from it, but there's a lot that's just not easy to replicate and document under controlled conditions. How would someone quantify a rat-human bond? On the other hand how do you evaluate a rat's stress level when it's car surfing on the side view mirror going down the turnpike at highway speeds or being dunked underwater by a bunch of kids? I work way out of the box and I've seen and done a lot of things the experimenters never dreamed of... So my own current rat model, immersion theory, is kind of a propitiatory one. We use it to fix aggressive rats and to socialize rats a lot faster than most other methods... and its all based on communication and rat model that says rat can, will and want to communicate with their humans, as well as are able to understand humans. Moreover that rats and humans can socially bond... you can read my thread on the subject and evaluate the results for yourself.

Alpha confusion is an immersion term.... When the established social structure gets disturbed or when a rat comes into it's hormonal prime, one rat, possibly several can take it upon themselves to improve their social status... I won't disagree with this being hard wired, up to a point. But rats are social in the degree that they won't just keep getting beaten to a pulp over and over again without learning that it's a bad idea to keep challenging a vastly superior rat or human. I'm not going to say it's really a confusion, but we are on the internet and I try to be polite and I think its more than just alpha aggression... 

Terminology with rats on line is actually very problematic, even the term alpha is different for rats than other species, rats don't have as rigid a social hierarchy as wolves for example do. I understand how frustrating this can be to someone with a lab background... terms like stress, reinforcement, and stimulus are much more specific and better describe behaviors... but again we are in the real world and mostly dealing with people that don't have a psychology degree. It's easier for me to simply say your rat is confused about it's status in your family group. 

As to the study about how hormones increase as rats become the alpha and decrease when dethroned, I recall at the time there was a big public debate over castration of aggressive convicts. It was still being done in some states, and the study was trotted out by the side against forced castration... If rats hormone levels decreased to normal when they were put in a more appropriate social structure why shouldn't it happen with aggressive humans.... it was actually very successfully argued at the time and forced castration isn't commonly done in the US anymore. I haven't a clue where to find a citation to that study... but it makes sense... When a rat becomes the alpha, it tends to get larger and more aggressive and needs a higher hormonal level, when it's knocked back to a lower status all of that aggression would be counter-productive. Kind of like the testosterone levels in a winning vs a losing football team. You could argue that the winning team might be composed of more high testosterone individuals in the first place... and you might be right... But I've watched the aggression levels of members of a high school team decline as they went through a losing season... I think the imprecise term demoralized might best describe it. 

i don't think I would disagree or question a study that suggests that rats in a lab would be more inclined to be aggressive towards other rats than humans. But I haven't read a lot of studies where humans have moved in with the lab rats full time. Our rats predominantly live free range around the house and interact freely with us as well as other rats. And for the most part I get treated like another rat... they will swipe my food, and follow me around and my daughter will get on the floor and join them in chase games... We take them outdoors and lead them into very stressful and potentially dangerous situations and they cue off of our commands, voice tones and behaviors. I'm certainly not suggesting your study is wrong, just given different conditions you would come up with different results.

In a mixed human household, there's a lot of interaction going on. and I can't possibly conceive of a rat comprehending what a human is or how we think. I think that they are a lot like us... we tend to humanize animals and deities we aren't. Most people who are religious tend to think of God being a 'better' version of themselves for example. But seriously, if there were a supreme being how could we possibly know how he/she/it thinks or feels? Why would we even use a gender to describe a singular being? Because it's within our comprehension level. So why would we assume that rats would do otherwise? Other than our apparent physical differences why shouldn't we assume that a rat would see us like another rat? 

Logically what we assume is kind of irrelevant, My own experiences tend to indicate that our rats see us as other rats... 

In a household were a rat starts to become aggressive, either socially or hormonally, it's likely to start by bullying the other rats, but also becoming aggressive or defensive towards humans is not abnormal... It doesn't always happen, perhaps it doesn't happen often, we can debate the term often... but it does happen and that can give some indication on how bad the problem is. 

I'd certainly love to read the studies you have cited. My wife is currently working on her grad degree and I might be able to get into her library... but overall, I don't disagree with the results of most experiments.... They don't conflict with my own research and my own experience. Btu what happens in a lab isn't always what happens in the real world where countless variables come into play.

One would assume that if a husband beats a wife predictably for not having dinner ready when he gets home, she would always have dinner ready when he gets home at the predicted time... but sometimes she might do the opposite and become an abused spouse or other times she will call the police and have hubby arrested... There is a lot that goes into real world situations that can't be controlled for... 

I love behavior mod and operand conditioning models... they are provable and simple... but there's a lot more in heaven and on earth than is dreamed of in that branch of psychology. 

Like why do some rats love to hang out in tall trees and swing in the breeze?










or go out of their way to meet strangers?









Defective stress response? Sure why not. But I'm pretty sure there's a whole lot more going on than BF Skinner ever dreamed of.


Again, I'm not suggesting that anything you said was wrong or inaccurate, in fact it's a pleasure to converse with someone with a similar background but I've developed a lot of confidence, in my own research and experience along the way. Feel free to message me anytime so we don't wind up derailing other nice people's treads... something I'm likely guilty of more than not.


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## BlackAce (Apr 18, 2013)

I'm not discrediting experience, nor am I discrediting science. I'd like to think I have a fair background in both. What I am saying is there's a thin line between scientific fact and fiction. And I'm certainly not referencing any maze running studies and/or behavior chaining, which of course are far different from group dynamics and cognitive processing (which I was mentioning). You seem to be addressing what I already know as well. I was just curious where you got the idea that human influence can biologically affect rat testosterone levels, as I've seen you reference it a couple times. It's just something I don't see as scientifically or even biologically possible. If a rat is aggressive towards other rats, the ways that is rectified is either the testosterone levels are medically reduced through castration.. or they lower on their own through a rat's interaction with other rats (with one rat changing their reactions towards the other rat), not human influence on rat interaction cues. Conversely, if a rat is human aggressive your interactions with him or her would have a large impact for certain. And I'm sure with your background in the sciences you would agree that correlation does not imply causation. Just because I'm using scientifically grounded terms doesn't mean it isn't applicable in real life, they're just words used to describe already occurring phenomena! In fact that's what they were meant to describe in the first place.

But yeah I'd be willing to discuss matters further privately if you so desire, I just think a lot of conversations such as these tend to get lost in translation or convoluted in one way or another. I try to make what I want to get across as clear and concise as I'm able without sacrificing the point of it all. But it's easier said than done over the internet, as I don't think we're on the same topic.


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## Rat Daddy (Sep 25, 2011)

Oh heck, we've already side tracked this thread this far, so how much more harm can a few more posts do? Some folks might find this discussion as interesting as we do... But someone, feel free to cut in if it gets too much and we'll take it side bar...

We've seen lots of cases where human aggressive rats have been backed down and have become truly wonderful furry friends. In many of these cases the rats were both human and rat aggressive and the onset of the aggression corresponded to the typical age of the onset of hormonal aggression. It would be interesting to be getting blood work on the rats as they go through the process, but so far that hasn't been done except in the study I referenced.

Correlation or causation; dominance behaviors and high levels of hormones appear to be linked and submissive behaviors tend to be linked to lower hormone levels. I'm not sure whether we agree or disagree that a rats hormone levels are likely to drop when he's dethroned from alpha status by another rat, but if we agree on that, then why wouldn't the same be true when he's dethroned by a human? 

As to whether a human can influence rat on rat behavior, I believe it can.... I shout "girls stop fighting" and they do. I'm influencing their behavior. If a human can both directly influence rat on human behavior and can influence rat on rat behavior and behavior can influence testosterone levels.... it stands to reason that a human can have a direct impact on the hormone levels of a rat.


And yes, scientifically "stands to reason" is far from proof. But my own experience tends to strongly support it. I've also found that rats that when rats become aggressive towards both humans and other rats at around 4 to 6 months old, they tend to become much more well behaved towards both the humans and other rats at the same time... Correlation or causation, it's your call. 

I would absolutely love for someone to do the lab research with "normal" human bonded rats that have gone hormonally aggressive and measure their testosterone levels before, during and after extreme immersion to see how they are affected. We've all seen how well extreme immersion works and it would be interesting to see what the hard science is. On the other hand, we did a very successful extreme immersion with a neutered rat some time ago, and that worked too and it's worked with both younger and older rats and female rats... So perhaps there's more than just hormones at play... In fact, I pretty much assume there is. I think it has a lot to do with better bonding and communication and understanding, as well as the establishment of social order that rats can understand... But I believe that there's also an impact on hormone levels, in as much as studies have proven that environmental and social situations can influence hormone levels...

There are also certain rats that have abnormally high hormonal levels due to a physical or mental defect. I worked at the Essex County Hospital center formerly "Overbrook Mental Hospital" and I have a pretty good background in mental illness... I doubt there's a behavioral or social approach that can help certain rats or in fact certain people. Castration might help in certain cases. And then there's always Thorazine when nothing else helps.

So, can human interaction affect rat hormone levels? In the absence of evidence to the contrary, I'll vote yes, based on my own experience working with my own rats and with a few hundred people with problem rats... That's not as good as clinical evidence, and at this point there's still room for debate. In any event, I'd personally find it a lot more difficult to support the argument to the contrary, that a human can't directly or indirectly affect a rats behavior or hormone levels. 

But please message me with any links you find on the topic. About 50% of immersion was developed off the theory and about 50% percent of the theory was evolved from observing what actually worked best... There's likely a lot of refinement potential in there somewhere and likely several things I'm wrong about. I don't have access to a university lab or the funds to do clinical research of my own at this stage of my life, so I'm always open to improvement... My views on rat intelligence and socialization have changed over the years, and improved, and hopefully they will continue to as I go along.

I think it might be a fantastic finding if it turned out that aggressive rats with high hormone levels could become docile and passive without reducing their hormone levels after human intervention. I'd have a lot of rethinking to do, but to be honest, I'd welcome the challenge and the mental exercise. I can enjoy being proved wrong, because it gives me the opportunity to be more right in the future. And a clearer view on a situation should make for more progress... Despite my current opinions and understanding, I'm always open minded to better ideas.


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## BlackAce (Apr 18, 2013)

Yes, I agree hormone levels fluctuate in affected rats when becoming more dominant or more submissive as a result of an altercation. I'm saying that if a rat is rat aggressive, that means their testosterone levels are high, something I also think is agreed upon. However, the Galef study concluded that rats experiencing this type of aggression could be influenced positively by a trusted human, and be sweet and tame but still exhibit aggressive behaviors towards other rats. Especially when it comes to blood being drawn. I'm only using this to support my argument, not imply that lab conditions are identical to what pet rats experience. I know that's not true, I've studied in one. It's a helpful reference though, especially since it's hard to disprove what you find in blood work.

So someone might think that they had an effect on changing the behavior if they yell "no fighting" and after a few days the fighting stops. That's a correlation. What really happened was maybe the voice distracted the fighting rats for a time being, but sooner or later they're back at it again. But maybe the next day one of them submits faster or something. Their relationship changes thus influencing the fall of the problem testosterone levels. Your perception of what happened is easily confused with what probably ended up happening. A change in dynamic between rat and rat, the true causation. If a rat is human aggressive it is different, you can then make a change between human and rat. But no third party rat can make a human aggressive rat suddenly tame. That's the opposite take on it. I'm saying perception of certain events doesn't necessarily make it true. I'm bringing up this one specific fact, that people can somehow back down a rat and change how it is hormonaly affected by another rat. When I've seen nothing in any literature to support that, in fact the studies I referenced refuted that. Someone may think them yelling at a rat made their hormones somehow lower and be nice to their roommate, but that doesn't always work. That's because in rat aggressive rats the biggest predictor of change is change in territory, or change of submissive tactics during a scuffle. 

I suppose I'll end it there as I'm not sure you understand what I'm trying to say, and it's hard to have a discussion when it seems like two very separate topics are being discussed. I'm also not sure how to say it any differently than I have been.


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## Rat Daddy (Sep 25, 2011)

I think we're seeing hormone levels differently, you are seeing them from moment to moment, I'm more or less looking at them as a baseline. When I order my rats to stop fighting I'm influencing their behavior and most likely not their hormones. Agreed...

When a rat encounters another rat it sees for some reason as an adversary it's hormone levels are likely to spike... (possibly more so the rat equivalent of human adrenaline than the rat equivalent of human testosterone but hormones do interact... so "hormone levels" is good enough for our discussion) I can't say for sure, as I haven't measured it, but it sounds fair to me... And I can't say that a human presence is likely to affect that spike... it might not, or it might reduce it, as the rat is also cognoscente of the human in the room, or the added stress of the human might even exaggerate the spike... That's also not to say that hormones alone are going to be the only predictor of behavior... A well trained rat should keep it's composure longer than an untrained rat. The transitory hormone fluctuation may very well be influenced by how the other rat reacts or how quickly it submits or if the other rat beats the first one to a pulp. A human hand coming in between the two rats and smacking the aggressor might have some influence here too... In any event, I'd just be guessing... I will say for certain that impacting a wall at a high rate of speed immediately snapped our part wild rat out of attack mode and back into friendly mode between the time she hit the wall and hit the floor. I don't know if hormone levels can change that quickly, but behavior certainly can.

That said and perhaps agreed upon... hormonally aggressive rats are reported to have a higher baseline hormone level... some rat owners report this as "looking uncomfortable in their own skin" or a "constant state of agitation". I've also heard the term "all revved up and nowhere to go". In this state, rats often demonstrate excess aggression against other rats and sometimes humans. It's the overall elevated baseline hormonal level associated with the "normal" instinct to become alpha or with becoming alpha that is reduced when an alpha is dethroned or a human intervenes to take the leadership role from him. After extreme immersion most people describe their formerly "alpha confused" rats as becoming calmer and more relaxed over the period of the next couple of weeks as their baseline returns to normal for a rat that isn't alpha... 

When the rat does attack the human directly, it's easier to see the effect of the direct human intervention on the rat, but it has a similar effect when the human intervenes on behalf of another rat... Overall, it might seem counter-intuitive, or not, that rats fight less when there's a well established alpha and an established social structure... When the human heads this society generally things are more peaceful... Therefore in this kind of a society we should see all of it's members having lower baseline levels of hormones associated with aggression and dominance behavior.


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## BlackAce (Apr 18, 2013)

Your last point is what I disagree with, not only from a biological standpoint but also from an evolutionary one. But honestly, you seem to be talking yourself in circles so I don't believe this is a productive conversation anymore.


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## Rat Daddy (Sep 25, 2011)

I just wanted to be clear so we can agree on what we disagree on. I don't mind if people don't agree with me, I just hate to be misunderstood.


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