Men tend to engage in higher risk behaviors than women.

It's impossible to say which gender is superior between men and women, but when it comes to unnecessary and untimely deaths, men are the champions.

A 20-year study by the Darwin Awards, an annual awards show that compiles the most stupid deaths, found that nearly 90% of these deaths were of men.

Named after Charles Darwin, who proposed the principle of natural selection, the award recognizes those who have inadvertently improved the gene pool by removing themselves from the human population through surprisingly stupid methods.

Worthy candidates include a man who tried to hitch a ride on a train by tying a shopping trolley to the back of it, only to be dragged two miles to his death before the train could stop, and a terrorist who carelessly opened his own letter bomb when it was returned because it didn’t have enough stamps.

Other examples include a man who shot himself in the head with a "spy pen" weapon to prove to a friend that it was a real weapon, and a thief who tried to "steal" a steel cable from an elevator and unscrew it while standing in the elevator, causing the elevator to fall to the ground, killing the thief.

Men are willing to take on very unnecessary, possibly life-threatening challenges just to get "bragging rights".

Of the 332 independently verified nominations, 14 were excluded from analysis because they were attributed to both men and women.

Of the remaining 318 cases, 282 (88.7%) were of men and only 36 were of women—a disparity that is consistent with the male idiot theory (MIT), which holds that men are idiots who do stupid things.

Writing in the Christmas issue of the British Medical Journal, the researchers said it was puzzling that men would be willing to take on unnecessary, potentially life-threatening challenges simply as a milestone or to gain "bragging rights".

While gender differences in risk-seeking behavior are well documented, little is known about the gender gap in foolish risk-taking. So the researchers looked at Darwin Award data from 1995 to 2014, paying close attention to the gender of the winner.

"Foolish risks are defined as senseless risks where the reward is negligible or non-existent and the outcome is often very negative, often catastrophic," said Dr Dennis Lendrem, of Newcastle University.

"According to MIT theory, differences in risk-seeking behavior, emergency room visits, and mortality can be explained by the observation that men are stupid and stupid people do stupid things."

"There is anecdotal data to support MIT, but to date there has been no systematic analysis of gender differences in stupid risk-seeking behavior."

The researchers acknowledged that the study had several limitations because women may be more likely to nominate men for Darwin Awards, or gender differences may be seen in alcohol use between men and women.

However, Dr Lendrem said: "Despite these limitations, it is difficult to doubt that Darwin Award winners do not appear to make a real risk assessment or attempt to control risk. They simply do what they like. In some cases, the intelligence of the award winners may be questioned."

He also said that real-world data supports the theory that alcohol makes men feel “fully armored” after just a few drinks, and this should not be ignored.

Researchers believe MIT deserves further investigation. Dr. Lendrem said he was surprised by the large gender gap, with men accounting for 88.7% of untimely deaths.

But he added: "Interestingly, the women in my office did not express the same surprise. I think that says it all."

According to Khoahoc.tv