AUDITIONS have kicked off and Mel B was recently revealed as the fourth and final addition to this year’s judging panel on The X Factor – cue column inches aplenty pitting her against fellow judge Cheryl Cole, who’s returning to the hit show.

The X Factor is a competition, we acknowledge that. What’s a little harder to stomach is the automatic “competition” between Cole and B, a “competition” gleefully whisked up by a media intent on assuming that all women must hate other women.

Admittedly, there is a little backstory between these two – last year, Cole, 30, made a snipe at the reformation of the “old and wrinkly”

Spice Girls. But is it really necessary to dig up that tiny seed and water it until it becomes a sodden parade of “battle of outfits” and “style war” headlines.

Why can’t it simply be two women going about their new jobs, in mutual womanly respect and support?

One answer, of course, is that it wouldn’t make such a catchy headline.

But the other answer, sadly for the sisterhood, is evolution.

“It’s the queen bee syndrome, whereby women feel that only one of them can shine, and they want to be that one,” explains Sandi Mann, from the department of psychology at the University of Central Lancashire.

“This makes women feel competitive towards other women, as they see them as competing for the same limited resources.”

Certainly, a number of studies back up this idea that females are mean to females in an engrained need to “protect their patch”.

According to recent research from a college in Boston, because women give birth, they have to protect their bodies from physical harm and protect any resources such as food and shelter. As such, they resort to veiled aggression towards other women rather than the risk of physical confrontation, like men.

Similarly, it’s not only about birth, it’s about gaining breeding rights in the first place; women will phase out attractive newcomers to a group to ensure they increase their own chances with any surrounding males.

Again, you might dismiss this as sexist nonsense, but witness any pretty female walking into a bar/ meeting/office, and you’ll soon witness the inevitable scan, snarl and shoulder turn.

No? Still not convinced? Research last year from the University of Ottawa measured reactions of women first to another conservatively dressed woman, and then to a lessconservatively dressed one – 97 per cent reacted to the latter on the upper end of the “bitchy-behaviour scale”.

Yet another study, by the Royal Society, investigated the scientific basis for “competition and aggression” between women.

The conclusion? It’s most likely we evolved to be mean to one another.

Not only that, but we evolved to do it together – a la Mean Girls – because we’ve realised “coalitions or alliances [of women] may reduce risk of retaliation”.

Before we all give up though, before we let the apparently dying embers of female friendship snuff out forever, perhaps we should remember there are some flames that’ll never go out.

A few years ago, a US report about women in business revealed that 73 per cent of career-advancing support was given from women to women, while UCLA research suggested that better social relationships are the reason women live longer than men, reducing the risk of disease by decreasing blood pressure, cholesterol and heart rate.

But it’s not all about the science.

Because yes, sometimes, consciously or not, we all snub a woman we don’t know because they’re more attractive, more powerful or (apparently) more likely to take our food.

But we all also realise – don’t we?

– that without those women we do know – without the mothers, sisters, aunts and friends that we love – we would, basically, be nothing.