Women Are Born To Shop.

Men who hate trawling the shopping centres now have the perfect excuse to stay at home.

Experts have found women are much better than men at finding their way around stores and locating products.

They excel at remembering the location of fruit, vegetables and high-calorie treats.

The researchers say the phenomenon has its roots deep in evolution, in the activities of our forebears.

While men developed the acute sense of direction needed for hunting, women mastered the art of gathering food such as fruits and berries.

According to the University of California researchers, these traits have been passed down, meaning men are better at reading maps while women are stars at shopping.

To test their theory, they sent 86 men and women on a trip around a farmers' market.

Each was given a list of stalls to visit and foods to sample.

They were then asked how much they had liked the foods and to map out the locations of the stalls they had visited.

The women were much more accurate in remembering the stalls' positions.

Further analysis revealed that their memories were influenced not by how much they liked the foods but by the number of calories they contained.

Foods with a high calorie count, such as almonds, olive oil and honey, were remembered better than vegetables and other foods which provide less energy for their size.

Writing in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B, the res-earchers said this is further evidence of an evolutionary origin, as our ancestors would have needed to memorise the location of the foods that would give the most energy.

They said: "The finding that nutritional quality enhances spatial memory further supports the idea that our task is engaging a foraging-related spatial adaptation."

Men, they said, tend to be better at map-reading - a skill honed through 'pursuing mobile prey over erratic and unpredictable courses'.

British research published this week used our hunter-gatherer ancestors to explain women's preference for pink.

The Newcastle University psychologists said it was likely women honed an ability to pick out the colours when foraging for ripe fruits.

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