'Night owls cleverer, richer than early birds' :P

Researchers have carried out the study and found that late risers tire less quickly than those who make a point of getting up at the crack of dawn, British newspaper the Daily Mail reported. :P

For the latest study, the researchers pitted morning larks against night owls in a task designed to measure their reaction and attention times.

During the experiment, the subjects got up and went to bed at their usual times, with the larks tending to turn in four hours earlier than the owls. Both did similarly well at the task shortly after getting up. But 10 later, it was the night owls that shone, being both quicker and alert at task.

Despite being awake for the same length of time, the larks felt sleepier, with scans showing that the parts of their brains linked to attention were less active.

“During the evening session, evening types were less sleepy and tended to perform faster than morning types,” Philippe Peigneux of the University of Liege in Belgium was quoted as saying.

Famous night owls include Charles Darwin, Adolf Hitler and Winston Churchill, who regularly went to bed at 4am and rose late. Due to his sleeping patterns, he often hosted War Cabinet meetings in his bath.

It is thought that the division into larks and owls has its roots in evolution, with early risers in the Stone Age taking the initiative in food gathering, while owls stood guard late into the night.

The study has been published in the latest edition of the Science journal.