| Summary: | How do mushroom
foragers make safe and efficient decisions under uncertainty, or deal with the
genuine risks of misidentification and poisoning? This article is an inquiry
into ecological rationality, heuristics, perception, and decision-making in
mushroom foraging. By surveying 894 Finnish mushroom foragers, this article
illustrates how socially learned rules of thumb and heuristics are used in
mushroom foraging, and how simple heuristics are often complemented by more
complex and intuitive decision-making. The results illustrate how traditional
foraging cultures have evolved precautionary heuristics to deal with
uncertainties and poisonous species, and how foragers develop selective
attention through experience. The study invites us to consider whether other
human foraging cultures might use heuristics similarly, how and why such
traditions have culturally evolved, and whether early hunter-gatherers might
have used simple heuristics to deal with uncertainty.
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