Those rough and tough survival experts on television are entertaining and sometimes give useful travel survival tips. However, machismo could be the death of you in a survival situation.

My colleagues and I were once given a teamwork exercise in which we were to regard ourselves as passengers on a plane that had crashed in the Amazonian rain forest. We were shown a list from which We had to choose a small number of items that would help us to survive until rescued.

The men invariably chose a Swiss army knife, a compass and a map at the expense of other useful items. The women gave priority to anti-malarial prophylactics, blankets and biscuits (because the sugar might help victims of shock).

I concluded after the exercise that if the plane was full of women, the rescuers would find them huddled together near the plane, probably miserable and hungry but pretty much unharmed. If the plane was full of men, however, the rescuers, if they found anything at all, would find only skeletons clutching a map, a compass and a Swiss army knife.

Men, listen to the women!