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Men maintain friendships by going to the pub and watching football rather than talking, new research has found.

Scientists investigating why some friendships last longer than others found sharp differences in the way men and women behave.

Researchers discovered that men remain friends with other males by doing things together like going to a football match or to the pub for a drink.

Women maintain their friendships by talking to each other more on the phone, according to the research carried out by scientists at Oxford University.

They followed a group of 30 children as they made the transition to university and jobs and mapped out what happened to their social networks.

Professor Robin Dunbar, an Oxford University evolutionary biologist, who led the research, said: “What determined whether they survived with girls was whether they made the effort to talk more to each other on the phone.

"Talking had absolutely no effect on boys' relationships at all. What held up their friendships was doing stuff together.

“Going to a football match, going to the pub for a drink. It was a very striking sex difference."

Professor Dunbar was speaking at the Annual Meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in Boston, the Times reported.

He said his previous research found that women typically had far stronger, close relationships, while men were more likely to maintain a loose group of friends.