They say ‘Men are from Mars and Women are from Venus’. And apart from the obvious, we’re different in more ways than we might know.

Now, before anyone gets outraged and makes accusations of sexism, let’s all just slow down a touch.

Firstly, let’s acknowledge that, based on forty-six separate meta-analyses conducted during the 1980s and 90s, a 2005 study published in the US journal Psychologist underscored that men and women are basically alike in terms of personality, cognitive ability and leadership. But the same study found a couple of substantive differences too. These main areas of variance were summarised as follows: ‘Compared with women, men could throw farther, were more physically aggressive, masturbated more, and held more positive attitudes about sex in uncommitted relationships.’

However, even this finding wasn’t set-in concrete. In one experiment, participants were told that they wouldn’t be identified as male or female, and wouldn’t wear any identification. In this case, no one conformed to usual male-female stereotypes when given the opportunity to show aggression. Indeed, women were consistently more aggressive and men were more passive.’ (Psychologist Janet Shibley Hyde, PhD, of the University of Wisconsin in Madison)

So, what are we to make of all this? Have we gotten to the point where we reckon the only difference between men and women is that females bear children?

I don’t think so. There are actually some more subtle differences between the sexes and these can make a real difference, whether in a survival situation or in day to day life.

Let me explain.

In my relationship with my wife, I tend to do more washing, cooking and shopping; simply because I work from home. It was during one of these outings that my attention was brought to another difference between men and women.

You see, I’m a sucker for a bargain. Blame it on my Prepper tendencies (my wife might say hoarder), but sale items genuinely pique my interest. If there’s a half-price tag on an item that has genuine value to me, you can’t take my money fast enough.

So I immediately noticed when our local supermarket recently changed its reduced-price labelling. Previously, the labels were square-shaped with a white price section and an orange rectangle at the top. I’d even go so far as to say that this colouration was blaze orange. But suddenly the stickers were a different in size, shape and (to me more importantly), colour!

The thing is that I depend on these labels. They’re my visual target as I scan the shelves and forage through the aisles, hunting for bargains among the fresh produce and meat, as well as on discontinued stock items and products with damaged packaging. You see, I know that all of these items remain fully fit for human consumption because I’ve been conducting recon on my local store for years.

So I know that a massive delivery truck arrives twice a week to disgorge a new supply of stock. I know that there’s limited storage space for this new product out the back of the store. Which means that I also know that any displayed product that hasn’t sold as quickly as the store manager expected simply has to be moved quickly to make space for the new arrivals. And that’s when the sale sticker gets slapped on the packet - which is my trigger to pounce.

When the markdown tags were in blaze orange and white, I reckon I could see them from 5-10 metres away and I’d hone-in on them like a seagull on a hot chip. But suddenly, my favourite bargain hunting ground had changed the rules of engagement. Now I was looking at labels comprising a full square of yellow with bolder typeset. And I didn’t like it. Not one little bit.

When I got home, I commented to the lady wife that I found the new markdown tags harder to see. To my surprise, she responded ‘That’s odd. I think they’re great. I can see them heaps easier.’

What was going on?

As I tried to reconcile myself to my local shop manager’s efforts to frustrate my bargain hunting, I found myself reflecting on a principle that I cover in our bushcraft and survival workshops. Specifically, I encourage people to wear or carry gear that’s bright orange. The reason is that you can use blaze orange items to aid passive signalling in an emergency situation. It’s the same reason that you’ll find that many products in Heiman Habitat’s online store are available in blaze orange – even the Heiman Hatchet. It’s also why hunters have to wear a piece of clothing in blaze orange when hunting on State land – so that other users of the area stand a better chance of seeing them.

Now it’s a common joke that that if you ask men and women to name colours you’ll get basic responses from men (red, yellow, green, blue, dark blue) and some creative ones from women (carnation, lemon, light sage, magenta and maybe even cerulean – I had to look that one up!).

But is there more to it than a joke?

The answer’s yes. While blokes are apparently really good at tracking fast-moving objects and discerning detail from a distance, studies show that women are better at discriminating among colours. There are also differences when it comes to colour wavelengths. So, the ‘warmer’ colours including orange, for example, may appear redder to a man than to a woman. Likewise, the grass is almost always greener to women than to men. Apparently, to men’s eyes, verdant objects appear yellower in colour.

These differences have an evolutionary and physiological basis, possibly linked to our hunter-gather past. For example, men have 25% more neurons in the visual cortex than females and there is also more testosterone present in the region. Age is also a factor. Older people see colours differently to younger people. Also people who work with colour—think of artists and designers—are considered to have a significantly enhanced ‘colour vocabulary’ than the rest of us. So culture and exposure makes a difference too.

All of which makes me conclude that the colour change in mark-down labels at our local store was far more calculated that it might at first have appeared. The evidence is stacking up that marketers have had a heavy hand in it. Smug in their stereotypical assumptions that women do most of the grocery shopping, they’ve happily replaced boy-friendly blaze orange stickers with a shade of yellow that probably radiates towards women like a warm sunny day. It also probably has a name that I couldn’t pronounce if I tried.

But this old dog’s not out of the game yet. It’ll take more than a bit of ill-adapted physiology to stand between me and a bargain. “I am Man – See me shop!”