It has long been held that the early bird catches the worm. But it is the night owl that lasts the distance, research shows.

It found that late risers tire less quickly than those who make a point of getting up at the crack of dawn.

The study is likely to be embraced by anyone tired of being branded lazy for their love of a lie-in

And it adds to growing evidence that it is night owls that rule the roost.

Previous studies have found that those who rise later tend to be both cleverer and richer than early birds.

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

During the experiment, the volunteers 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 ten hours into their day, it was the night owls that shone, being both quicker and more alert at the task, the journal Science reports.

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.

Dr Philippe Peigneux, of the University of Liege in Belgium, said: 'During the evening session, evening types were less sleepy and tended to perform faster than morning types.'

Previous studies have shown that getting up late appears to be in our DNA, with our body clock regulated by a series of genes which determine whether we are larks or owls.

Other studies have debunked the popular saying 'early to bed and early to rise makes a man healthy, wealthy and wise'.

Night owls have been shown to be cleverer than larks, with quicker minds and better memories. They also earn more.

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.

Those who fell into neither category could sleep safely in the knowledge that their needs were being taken care of.

When humans moved towards tending animals and harvesting crops, larks came in demand for the early starts, while owls started to be thought of as less industrious.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1173028/How-night-owls-cleverer-richer-people-rise-early.html

I can't stand morning people.

(((Atlantis))) Very interesting... most of us should be someone great then... I sure wish I could do something great by being a niteowl...

Seriously, morning people suck.

for sure i sleep from 5 am till 9 am and im all kinda kick ass u say tv also rots ur brain but ill rock ur world in trivia so for all the things society says is bad **** it do it any way cuz itll work in your advantage in the end

oh and i get alot more **** done in 1 day so haha ****ers

How odd? It is said that Benjamin Franklin was a early bird and believe that the brain works best when well rested by going to bed punctual.

but perhaps statistically you are right?

Very interesting article indeed and something to contemplate on.

Hmmmm.

I'm a morning person, and have been since I was a child. I don't make it a point to get up at the crack of dawn, I just find myself waking early. I can work all day and well into the late night, sleep for a couple hours, and be back at it again the next morning. There are just some days I need more coffee than usual ;)

I won't argue against researcher logic, because it may be the general rule. *shrug* I'll just chalk it up to my being an oddity of nature, lol.

I find I stay up much too late most of the time working on this and that on the computer and then I need to get up early in the morning. I dont feel Im exceptionally clever by any stretch of the imagination. Im just one of those people that does not require a great deal of sleep. That might change the older I get however.