It would seem from some of the comments that have been posted that I’ve upset at least one female bigfoot researcher with my previous post about women participating in sasquatch research. This certainly wasn’t my intention. As I said in the original article, I applaud their efforts and in some cases encourage them to do whatever they can to help in the search.

As researchers it’s important that we not get too caught up in the emotion of our work and stay focused on the facts. One fact that I’m sure we can all agree on is that God and nature have a way of assigning specific roles to the sexes—tasks that one sex is better suited for than the other. This isn’t to say that either sex is less important—even though in most cases one of them probably is—it simply means that if we can understand our place in the world, we can better perform the tasks to which we are best suited.

If you look to nature you’ll find many examples—starting in the human womb. Until a human fetus is about two months old the brain has all of the signs of being female. Some fetuses stop developing at this point and some continue to grow until they develop into a male brain. We don’t know why this happens, but it does suggest that the male brain requires further incubation to develop to the unmatched level it eventually reaches. This isn’t to say that women aren’t intelligent, sometimes they are.

In this Darwinian document at The Leakey Foundation, researchers have shown that even today Aboriginal tribes in Australia forage for food in the same way they have for thousands of years. They’ve noted that “Men prefer to track game and women prefer to dig it up.” Further proof that men have been blessed with the gift of tracking and women have been given the ability to dig holes well. This probably stems from an early need for women to dig fire pits for cooking while the men were out gathering meat. Regardless, it does provide evidence that perhaps women are better suited to the stability of home life while men are better at tasks like tracking bigfeet.

These traits aren’t limited to the human world. In the animal kingdom our closest mammalian relative, the african lion, has a clear sexual division of labor. The male is dominant in the pack and has trained the female to not only care for the young, but also hunt for food and even clean his paws in many cases. If she fails to perform her tasks to the male’s satisfaction, he may choose to withhold his seed from her, or even direct the other females in his harem to devour her. Jane Goodall and Diane Fossey have likely witnessed similar behaviors in the primate world, though I must admit I haven’t paid much attention to their work so I couldn’t comment on specifics.

Now, I’m sure I could go on and on and show examples in our society of certain jobs, salaries, degrees, and political positions that would showcase how men have been able to rise to levels of greatness in the modern world. But this would be unfair to women. As the old adage goes: “behind every great man is a good woman”…I think truer words have not been spoken. I can’t imagine my life without the warm touch of my wife—or some other woman.

In closing I’ll say that as we strive to learn more about these mysterious creatures, it’s very common to get frustrated by their seemingly random ways and elusive patterns. It’s easy to forget that underneath it all they are human-like creatures that share most of our DNA. I’m not talking about bigfoot, I’m talking about our better halves…our women. It’s important to remember that even though they need us more, we still need them too—let’s try not to lose sight of that.