Am I a nocturnal animal?

Our bodies retain remnants of our evolutionary past. The obvious example of that is the light covering of hair on our bodies. They suggest that we were once furry animals but lost most of the fur when we became marine animals. Many marine animals have lost all fur -- whales, dolphins etc. So we were well on the path to that but did not quite get there because we started doing something else

And what that is seems obvious. We became arboreal. We started climbing trees. Our closest relatives, the monkeys, mostly climb trees and have hands like ours -- good for grabbing branches.

Many arboreal creaures are also nocturnal. They come to life at night

So, like our body hair, it seems likely that we have some evolutionary remnant in us that inclines some of us to being nocturnal. And there is evidence of that. Many party-goers and night-clubbers jokingly refer to themselves as nocturnal because of their tendency to carry on late -- up to 3am in the morning or thereabouts.

I think I share those tendencies. Parties tend to bore me as everybody gets drunker so I don't stay long at them but I often am brightly awake at midninght and tend to nap a lot during the day.

But being nocturnal has its problems. It puts you out of synch with the normal activities of daytime. Just when you are sleeping nicely, you may have to get up and go to work.

At age 80, I no longer go to work but I do have some morning activities that I value so I try to sleep at night and be awake during the day. But to do that I have to take sleeeping pills to bomb me out before midnight. So I go against what my body wants me to do. I am very tempted to throw away the pills and just sleep when I am tired. And I will see if I can make arrangements to accommodate that.

I did do it once before. I went pill-free and ended up still getting enough sleep -- mostly during the day