Stuart Brody of the University of the West of Scotland in collaboration with colleagues in Belgium studied 16 female Belgian university students. Subjects completed a questionnaire on their sexual behavior and were then videotaped from a distance while walking in a public place.

The videotapes were rated by two professors of sexology and two research assistants trained in the functional-sexological approach to sexology, who were not aware of the women's orgasmic history.

The study, published in The Journal of Sexual Medicine, found that trained sexologists were able to correctly infer vaginal orgasm more than 80 percent of the time by watching the way the women walked. Further analysis revealed that the sum of stride length and vertebral rotation was greater for the vaginally orgasmic women.

"This could reflect the free, unblocked energetic flow from the legs through the pelvis to the spine," the authors note.

A woman's anatomical features may predispose her to greater or lesser tendency to experience vaginal orgasm, the authors speculate.