麻豆社

Some of us want to be up with the larks, while others are more like night owls. But is our preference down to our genes, or more to do with habits and surroundings? We set out to find the answers, inspired by a question from Kira, a night owl CrowdScience listener in Philadelphia, USA.

Our daily, or circadian, body clocks are a hot topic of discussion at the moment - this year鈥檚 Nobel Prize for Medicine went to three scientists who discovered the gene that makes these clocks tick. To answer our listener鈥檚 question, we need to know why different clocks tick at different rates, so we visit a specialist sleep centre to see how having a slow-ticking clock makes it hard for you to leap out of bed in the morning.

And the morning sun helps all of us regulate our daily rhythm, so what happens when it doesn鈥檛 rise at all? We travel to Troms酶, in the far north of Norway, to see how morning and evening types fare during the long polar nights - and meet the reindeer who seem to be able to switch off their daily clocks altogether. Meanwhile down near the equator, we hear about the hunter-gatherer community in Tanzania where there鈥檚 nearly always someone awake.

Sami song, the joik of R谩ikku-脕nte, is performed by Ken Even Berg

Do you have a question we can turn into a programme? Email us at crowdscience@bbc.co.uk

Presenter: Anand Jagatia
Producer: Cathy Edwards

(Image: L - Women smiling on a run R - Women DJ. Credit: Getty Images)