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What's the best way for single men to land a girlfriend?

According to one study the answer turns out to be a bit of a catch-22 - women prefer men who have had previous relationships, but having too many partners is detrimental.

In fact, Australian researchers found that having too partners many was less desirable than someone who had none at all.

Researchers from James Cook University in Australia have found that women prefer men who have had one or two previous partners (stock image shown). Men who had had no previous partners were less desirable, while men with five previous relationships were the least desirable of all

The study was published in the journal Human Nature and is somewhat amusingly titled 'I want what she's having'.

In it, Ryan Anderson and Michele Surbey of James Cook University in Queensland, Australia looked at how human mating compared to the rest of the animal kingdom.

They noted how non-human animals prefer males that have had had previous association with other females, a phenomenon known as 'mate copying'.

The researchers investigated 'whether humans also exhibit mate copying', and if women preferred experienced men.

In the study, 123 female university students rated men pictured alone or with one, two or five women represented by silhouettes.

The silhouettes, or lack thereof, represented how many relationships they had had in the last four years.

The act of 'mate copying', as this phenomenon is called, is something that has been observed in other animals before such as birds (two red-crowned cranes pictured in a courtship display), as well as fish. The trait apparently helps the female of a species pick more high-quality mates

The findings showed that women preferred men who had one or two previous partners, as opposed to those who'd had none.

Men with five previous partners, however, were the least desirable.

'Maybe that's an indication that he's promiscuous or unable or unwilling to commit, maybe he's a bit flaky - for whatever reason, he just can't hold down relationship so that was seen as a huge turn-off,' the researchers told ABC.

And age was also a factor - younger women were more likely to 'mate copy' than older women.

'Our results suggest that women do not always make mate choices independent of one another [and] there appears to be a significant desirability advantage for men who have been previously selected as a romantic partner,' the authors added.

'Humans are nothing more than a really pretentious species of animal,' Anderson added.