It is beyond hypothesis, indubitably fact that women are more prudent, sensible and averse to rushing headlong into situations they feel they will be unable to swiftly extricate themselves from with safety. Men, which is to say many men, tend to act first, think later if they think at all about what they're committing themselves to.

For them, it is as though they have an anti-survival compulsion to tempt fate.

It is one of the reasons that psychologists and insurance agencies, not to speak of governmental statistical agencies point to, for the longer life-expectancy of women in any given society, all other things being equal. Men are just more likely than women to place themselves into situations where they may come to harm than are women.



A team of British researchers researching the field of Male Idiot Theory have satisfied themselves that in this particular instance of the differences between the genders, "idiotic risk-taking behaviour" happens to be a reality. What they did is to assemble and dissect a 20-year span of the Darwin Award nominees. Males comprised 88.6 percent of Darwin Award winners over the period of the study in what was described as the first systematic review of its kind.

They looked at past winners of the Darwin Award and came up with some dandies, including the story of an Iraqi terrorist who mailed a letter bomb with insufficient postage and when it was 'returned to sender', he opened the package which exploded in his face. Another man died when he hitched a shopping cart to the back of a train which dragged him to his death.



Since the award is for the tongue in-cheek  recognition of men who voluntarily distance themselves from the human evolutionary track by putting themselves out of commission, thus self-selecting out of the gene pool, we should be grateful, in a sense that they do come acrop through their own stupid devices, rushing into situations they haven't adequately thought out to their conclusions.

Their noble self-sacrifice to further the human evolutionary track on the other hand, is admirable.

Of the 318 validated cases studied by the Darwin Award selection committee, 282 men were awarded the prize for idiotic risk-taking behaviour, as opposed to a mere 36 women. Good to know that women are recognized as fully capable of committing themselves to self-destructive behaviours as well; wouldn't do to damn all men, after all, since we love them so dearly.

"I think we should be teaching people that there are high-risk situations where they will be tempted to act upon their impulse, and that maybe they should just pause, give it a second thought and then maybe take action. I think women do that naturally", opined the study co-author Dennis Lendrem.

And that is, in fact, what most mothers attempt to impress upon their impulsive sons in an effort to steer them away from potential disaster.