Shakira was right; hips don't lie, say scientists

Your hips could reveal your innermost secrets -- details about your mood, your health and even if you are telling lies.

Rory Wilson, professor of aquatic biology at Swansea University, has come up with device capable of recording up to 100 movements per second when worn on a belt or around sthe ankle.

The device measures barely perceptible differences in the way a person walks to reveal whether they are telling the truth and the emotions they are feeling.

The same miniscule movements could also be used to detect whether someone is going to fall ill before they feel any symptoms, Wilson and his colleagues claim, according to the Telegraph.

Wilson initially developed the device, the Daily Diary, to study the behaviour of penguins in the wild but has been adapting it for use in other animals and humans.

"We are using high-end physics to precisely measure the postural changes between 50 and 100 times a second. These tiny movements betray what is going on.

"The implications for lie detectors are profound. How much are we unconsciously telling our story without realising it? That would be very useful to police to be able to pick that up.

"We have been doing some work with humans and it is possible to tell their mood or state of mind from the movements they make," he said.

Although the work on mood and lie detection has yet to be published, early findings from the experiments he and his colleagues have been conducting show it is highly effective.

Current approaches for lie detection rely upon detecting changes in heart beat, sweating or brain activity. Changes in the levels of stress hormones in the blood can also give a liar away.

Wilson, however, explained that a device based on the Daily Diary, which uses accelerometers to detect body movements and is little bigger than a watch, can be simply worn on a belt or the wrist to record information about the way a person walks.