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After looking at Madina’s comment, I thought: “salt water running through channels”. We left class undecided on the subject of whether males and females behaved differently, but in when thinking about it, if all nervous systems are made up of “salt water running through channels,” how can human nervous systems make us act so differently from dogs? The answer lies in the receptor proteins and how every cell responds to the binding of a chemical to a receptor.

Many hormones that are found in other mammals are also found within humans, but the cellular response accounts for the different outputs of behavior. For example, when a dog feels threatened, their hair stands up and the dog begins to growl; however, when a human feels threatened, there are various responses that can occur: challenge the stimulus or retreat. The difference between the outputs lies in the connections of the brain. Every individual has distinct connections in the brain, which account for the varying responses among species as well as within a species. The connections that are established during development and through maturation determine whether the organism will growl, challenge or retreat.

So yes, there are the differing levels of hormones in males and in females, and yet it is these varying intensities of estrogen and testosterone that produce the differences in behaviors, whether you perceive them to be vast or minute differences, among men and women because in reality they have the same “salt water running through channels.”