According to scientists at the University of Leeds, a woman’s figure could play a crucial role in her decision to have sex

Specifically, women with wider hips are more likely to have more sexual partners. Less-hippy women, on the other hand, tend to take a more prudent approach to sex. “Women’s hip width has a direct impact on their risk of potentially fatal childbirth-related injury,” said Colin Hendrie, an associate professor of human and animal ethology at the University of Leeds who led the study. “Women’s sexual activity is therefore at least in part influenced by hip width.” Hendrie and his colleagues recruited 148 women between 18 and 26 years old from around the University of Leeds who’d had sex at least once in their lives. Women with hips wider than 14.2 inches had more sexual partners and one-night stands than those with hips narrower than 12.2 inches. Some anthropologists theorize that as humans learned to stand upright, they developed smaller hips to make walking easier, while female hips became just wide enough for childbirth. Narrow-hipped mothers-to-be run a higher risk of gynecological injury and death. Earlier research has shown that a woman’s waist-to-hip ratio correlates with her attractiveness — playing a major role in influencing the number and quality of men available to her for sex. But hip width may factor more into her decision to actually sleep with them.