New York, Sep 30 (IANS): When it comes to satisfying your carnal desire, a little extra body weight may come in handy as researchers have found that overweight men are likely to have more sexual partners than their normal or underweight counterparts.

The survey involving 60,058 heterosexual people with a mean age of 37 found that on an average both men and women have had eight sexual partners since they have been sexually active.

With regard to men and body mass index (BMI), the study revealed that overweight men had the highest number of partners.

"Normal weight men and overweight men reported the most sex partners, and underweight men reported the least,” said lead author on the study David Frederick, assistant professor in psychology at Chapman University in California, US.

Although it may be initially surprising, it is important to note that the medical classification of overweight does not necessarily map onto social perceptions of overweight, the study said.

With regard to women, underweight women had notably fewer partners than other women.

"There are numerous possibilities as to why underweight women had few partners," Frederick explained.

"They may be highly dissatisfied with their weight and suffering from anorexia and thus not motivated to show their bodies; additionally, being underweight is associated with a relatively high mortality rate and/or they could be suffering from a variety of ailments that cause weight loss and thus have fewer sex partners because they are dealing with serious health issues," Frederick said.

The relationship between their height and number of sex partners revealed no revelations other than very short women reported fewer sex partners compared with tall women.

The expectation that tall men would have the most sex partners was only partially supported.

In fact, there was little difference in number of sex partners across the height continuum, with one exception -- only very short men reported notably fewer median sex partners (five) than men of other heights.

In terms of average number of partners, men who were average to extremely tall reported one to three more partners than men who were shorter than average.

The study appeared in the journal Evolutionary Psychology.