Sex differences in play fighting revisited: Traditional and nontraditional mechanisms of sexual differentiation in rats.

Archives of Sexual Behavior,  February, 2002  by Sergio M. Pellis

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Sergio M. Pellis (1)

INTRODUCTION

The traditional model of sexual differentiation in mammals views the female as the default condition. That is, in the absence of a hormonal influence to de-rail development from its "normal" trajectory, the phenotype will be female (Collaer & Hines, 1995). Play fighting is sexually differentiated (Fagen, 1981; Geary, 1998; Power, 2000), and appears to become so by the traditional mechanism (Goy & McEwen, 1980; Meaney, Stewart, & Beatty, 1985). That is, males engage in more play fighting than do females, and testicular secretion of androgens appears to be critical for this differentiation to occur. Indeed, ...