Study Shows Women May Be Better Natural Hunters than Men

A forthcoming study reinforces the notion that “men are from hunt, women are from gather.”

From the story on Boston.com:

The conventional wisdom is that men have better spatial skills, while women have better verbal skills, but a new study offers a more nuanced view. Researchers tracked men and women from a rural village in Mexico as they foraged for mushrooms. Using GPS and activity monitors, the researchers found that men were less efficient–they traveled farther, went higher, and exerted more effort than women for the same amount of mushrooms. Women also collected a greater variety of mushrooms from more sites. This pattern is consistent with the theory that, during the hunter-gatherer period of human evolution, women honed spatial skills needed for gathering while men honed spatial skills needed for hunting.

With our evolutionary nomadic hunter-gatherer days behind us and the modern hunter now confined to a smaller geographical areas, could it be argued that modern women – with their more methodical approach to gathering – have the potential to be better natural hunters than men?