Being fashion-conscious is not confined to humans, research has shown.

Animals copy one another when making choices about places to live, where to eat and acquiring a mate.

Such behaviour allows the rapid transmission of non-genetic traits, giving rise to a form of "cultural evolution".

Researchers reviewed the evidence for animal fashion in the edition of the journal Science that appears today.

The team, led by Etienne Danchin, from the CNRS research institution in Paris, wrote: "Psychologists, economists and advertising moguls have long known that human decision-making is strongly influenced by the behaviour of others.

"A rapidly accumulating body of evidence suggests that the same is true in animals ... Public information can lead to cultural evolution, which we suggest may then affect biological evolution."

Following popular trends can help animals to evaluate the world around them.

Starlings, for instance, will be attracted to a certain feeding area after spotting others successfully hunting there. In a similar way, mate-choice copying had been observed in several species of birds and fish.

A striking example was that of guppies, whose females are normally genetically driven to seek out brightly coloured mates. But in certain circumstances, female guppies can be attracted to drab males who are seen as popular.

"They can acquire a preference for drab males, provided that they observe other females mating preferentially with such males for a sufficiently long period of time," the scientists wrote.

Copying behaviour also led whales and birds to adopt certain song dialects, and helped to create colonies in sought-after habitats, the research showed.

"Cultural evolution may be ancestral and perhaps more widespread than is currently thought," the French scientists concluded.

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