Study says Curvy women beget smart kids

London: Curvy women are not only intelligent, attractive and live longer, they also give birth to intelligent children, finds a new study.

Women with large hips and small waists are considered curvy and they are found to be more intelligent than those with either "apple-shaped" or linear bodies, according to the study to be published this week in the journal Evolution and Human Behaviour. It is possibly because such women have higher levels of omega3 fatty acids on their hips. Intake of Omega3 fatty acids found in some types of fish is already known to help improve cognitive health.

Waist fat can also be a contributory factor in diabetes and heart disease. Thinner or linear shaped women would simply lack enough of either type of fat, scientists at the Universities of Pittsburgh and California, Santa Barbara have found. The researchers based their findings after collecting details of body measurements and scores in cognitive tests of about 16,000 women and girls.

They found that those women with a greater difference between the waist and hips scored significantly higher on the tests, as did their children, reported online edition of The Sunday Times.

Such women are not necessarily skinny. What is important is that their waist should be smaller than their hips, with the ideal ratio being between 0.6 and 0.7. A number of scientific studies have shown that men are "hard-wired" to find women with a greater waist-hip differential the most attractive. No one has yet been able to explain this, although theories include enhanced fertility, better childbearing abilities and longer life expectancy.