Boys like blue, girls like pink -- it's in our genes

Those who link pink with girls and blue with boys have always had tradition on their side.

Now, they have the backing of science.

Researchers at Newcastle University in the UK have found that women tend to prefer pink -- or at least a redder shade -- while men prefer blue, and the gender difference may be down to genes rather than upbringing, the Daily Mail reported on Tuesday.

The researchers came to the conclusion by presenting more than 200 men and women with a series of coloured triangles and asking them to pick out their favourite hues.

Faced with more than 250 different colour choices, the women clearly veered towards pinks and lilacs, while the men went mainly for blues.

The correlation was so strong that the researchers, whose results are published in the Current Biology journal, could tell someone's sex just by looking at their results of the colour test.

"Although we expected to find gender differences, we were surprised at how robust they were, given the simplicity of our test," the daily quoted one of the researchers Anya Hurlbert, a Professor of visual neuroscience, as saying.

It's believed that the difference has its roots in evolution and the activities of our hunter-gatherer forebears.

Early human societies almost certainly engaged in a division of labour between the sexes, with men developing a preference for the blue skies that signalled good weather for hunting, while women foraged locally for fruit and berries.

"This division of labour may be at the root of why girls now prefer pink. Evolution may have driven females to prefer reddish colours -- reddish fruits, healthy, reddish faces. Culture may exploit and compound this natural female preference," Professor Hulbert was quoted as saying.