wow, i'm on a role today!
If we look at nichelings as wolf-like creatures with this pack standpoint thing, (alpha, beta, omega) then we should maybe have some more wolf-like interactions. and i know this sounds cruel, but in the wild omegas are kind of used like stress relieving punching bags for higher ranked wolves. We could maybe add something like this to niche, only this interaction would only be one days worth of damage, and they will heal over time. Going with this, there might come a stress effect when food is scarce, there are lots of predators, or there are lots of babys to tend to. Thanks for reading!
EDIT: i should have said this before, but, stress with either nerf, or render useless some stats