Science Forums 2

[Boerseun]

After doing a bit more digging on the subject, it turns out that after losing a dominance fight (posturing, charging, threatening, etc.) the loser slows down his production of testosterone. It seems as if (like in the case of the Pit Vipers in the first post) the male's "depressed" attitude is not so much "depression" in the human sense, as much as merely a lowered inclination to get involved in any sort of mating activity, by merely having less testosterone coursing through its veins.

I'm not sure about any parallels between depression and testosterone production, though. It might be that I'm merely antropomorphizing symptoms that very much look the same.