[edmundsauto]

I’m unsure why the downvotes, but it would be an interesting study whether there is an adaptation for lower testosterone to encourage fathers to be more nurturing and less aggressive to their offspring. Ie, is there a plausible and measurable explanation for why the t-drop is evolutionarily advantageous.

[djtango]

Who knows. I did a postgrad in medicinal chemistry and I was always amazed at how we scaled up from tiny molecules/proteins into this crazy emergent system. Yet at the individual molecule level there was still so much we couldn't understand from a holistic first principles point of view.

At the time IIRC computer simulations would struggle to model like more 12 water molecules solvating something accurately.

So building up from that atomic level up to proteins into a full physiological system always seemed like magic to me and it's always felt like we didn't really know anything.

Coming back to the t response it would be interesting to know if anything else accidentally triggers it. Eg is it just babies that triggers the response? Only our baby? What about adopted babies or babies of family members? Can other cute things trigger it?