London, April 24 (IANS): Your hip reveals a lot than you may imagine - even your sexual preferences!

According to a fascinating research, women who are more inclined to have one-night stands usually have wider hips.

Overall, women in this study with hips wider than 36 centimetres (14.2 inches) had more sexual partners and more one-night stands than women with hips under 31 centimetres (12.2 inches) wide.

"Our results show that the number of sexual partners a woman had is largely driven by one-night stand behaviour. This, in turn, correlates with a woman’s hip width and not waist-to-hip ratio,” explained lead author Colin A. Hendrie from University of Leeds.

The study into whether hip width or waist-to-hip ratio was a better predictor of a woman’s sexual behaviour was conducted among 148 British women between 18 and 26 years old.

To reach this conclusion, the researchers measured hip width - defined as the distance between the upper outer edges of the iliac crest bones of the pelvis - as well hip circumference at the widest point and waist circumference at its narrowest point.

Participants also completed a questionnaire about their sexual histories, including the age at which they lost their virginity and the number of sexual partners they had.

“More specifically, the women for whom one-night stands accounted for three out of every four of their sexual relationships had hips at least two centimetres (0.8 inches) wider than their counterparts in whose lives such fleeting relationships were not as prevalent,” Hendrie emphasised.

Women's hip width has a direct impact on their risk of potentially fatal childbirth-related injury.

“It seems that when women have control over their own sexual activity, this risk is reflected in their behaviour. Women’s sexual activity is, therefore, at least in part influenced by hip width,” said Hendrie.

The paper was published in Springer’s journal Archives of Sexual Behavior.