1. When animals are out and about
C. E.

2. Diurnal Organisms Activity during the day
Sleeping or inactivity at night
Ex: Squirrels, elephants, gorillas, birds of prey

3. Nocturnal Organisms Activity at night
Sleeping or inactivity during the day
Ex: mice, bats, owls, opposums

4. How mice “see” at night
Most likely evolved as an avoidance response to predation pressure or birds of prey (diurnal)
Obtain sensory information through specialized whiskers on their snout
Deflection of whisker triggers sequential activity in the trigeminal ganglion, trigeminal brain stem, somatosensory thalamus and primary somatosensory neocortex
The cortical representation of each whisker can be recognized by anatomically defined ‘barrels’
Arranged in cortex identically to the layout of the whiskers on the snout of the rodent
Allows the response of synaptic circuits to be studied within context of well- defined stereotypical anatomical map

5. Crepuscular Active during twilight (dusk or dawn)
Often erroneously referred to as nocturnal
Those that are active during both morning and evening twilight are said to have a bimodal activity pattern
Ex: Ocelots, lynx, black-tailed jackrabbit

6. Matutinal
Animals active only before sunrise
Ex: bees, gerbils,

7. Vespertine Animals active only after sunset
Ex: insects such as moths (moon-moth) and flies and species of bats and owls that feed on these insects

8. Cathemerality/Metaturnality
sporadic and irregular intervals of activity during the day or night
Neither diurnal or nocturnal
Word is composed of two Greek terms
Kata-means through
Hamera-means day
Ex: specific primates, specific lemurs, river otters
In lemurs, this may be to regulate their temperature or to avoid predation

9. Resources https://animalsake.com/examples-of-crepuscular-animals
molecular-biology/nocturnal-animal