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Your genes decide if you’re a night owl or an early bird but which animal are you really? Find out if you’re a wolf, lion, bear, or dolphin and discover your sleep style.
5 Min Read | By Sophia Rimmer
Last Modified 12 August 2025 First Added 23 November 2020
Are you an early bird who loves sunrise, or do your best ideas strike when the stars come out? You might just fit one of four fun sleep chronotypes – wolf, lion, bear, or dolphin – that reveal how your body clock really ticks. In this article, we’ll help you discover your chronotype and share tips on how to time your day to feel your best self.
A sleep chronotype is your body’s natural preference for when you sleep and wake, shaped by your circadian rhythm and genes such as PER1, PER2, and PER3. These genes help regulate your internal clock, with PER3 influencing your sleep drive and PER1 and PER2 helping to keep your circadian rhythm in sync. However, chronotype is shaped not only by genetics but also by environmental factors and personal behaviours.
Dr Michael Breus popularised a user-friendly chronotype system in his book The Power of When, categorising people into four animal types: bear, wolf, lion, and dolphin. While scientific models like the Munich Chronotype Questionnaire identify a broader range of chronotypes, Breus’s framework remains widely used for guiding daily routines.
Understanding your chronotype can help you:
Social jet lag occurs when your body’s internal clock (your circadian rhythm) gets out of sync with your social schedule, such as work, school, or late-night plans.
For example, if you go to bed late and sleep in on weekends, but have to wake up early on weekdays, your body feels like it’s constantly switching time zones. You might feel groggy, have trouble focusing, or crave extra coffee on Monday morning – not because you actually travelled anywhere, but because your “biological time” and “social time” don’t match.
It’s kind of like having the Monday blues… but with a bit of science behind it.
Ultimately, knowing your chronotype helps you plan your day in a way that works with your body, not against it, so you feel more energised, get more done, and just feel better overall.
Find out which of the four chronotypes fits you best and read our easy tips to help you make the most of your day:
The bear is the most common chronotype and follows the sun’s natural cycle. Bears tend to perform best from mid-morning to early afternoon, with a natural energy dip in the mid to late afternoon.
Top tips for bear chronotypes:
Wolf chronotypes are night owls who love to stay up late and dislike early mornings. If you’re a wolf, your energy may peak in the late afternoon and evenings. So if this is you, you’ll do your best thinking at night.
Top tips for wolf chronotypes:
Dolphin chronotypes are light and fragmented sleepers. If this sounds like you, you may struggle to stay asleep.
Top tips for dolphin chronotypes:
Lions are early risers who like to get all their stuff done before the afternoon and are burnt out by 5 pm. If you’re a lion, you probably like to get an early night and sleep through until sunrise.
Top tips for lion chronotypes:
If you’re still wondering which chronotype you are, here’s how to find out:
Yes and no. Sleep chronotypes can shift with age, lifestyle, and environmental factors. This is why teenagers can often stay up late at night, while adults usually wake earlier. But the good news is, your basic sleep type stays pretty much the same throughout your life.
Yes, there are many ways. Let’s explore what they are and how they work together:
1. The Lark-Owl Chronotype Indicator
Developed by Roberts in 1999, the LOCI is a self-assessment that classifies you as a morning person (a lark) or an evening person (an owl) based on your preferred alertness timing. LOCI scores are less widely used but offer a more straightforward way to determine whether you naturally prefer morning or evening routines.
2. The Munich Chronotype Questionnaire
Developed in 2003 by Till Roenneberg, the MCTQ looks at how you sleep on workdays versus your days off. By comparing your sleep patterns, it calculates your “mid-sleep” time on free days – adjusted for any lost sleep – to estimate your natural biological chronotype. Unlike the animal categories, this method places you somewhere along a spectrum of seven different chronotype types:
3. The Morningness-Eveningness Questionnaire
Developed in 1976 by Horne & Östberg, the MEQ measures your daily preference for alertness and performance through 19 simple questions. It then places you into one of five categories:
4. Circadian Type Inventory
The CTI is designed to gauge how flexible or rigid you are in adjusting your sleep habits and how easily you overcome daytime tiredness. Initially developed by Folkard in 1987 and refined into an 11-item version by Di Milia in 2004, it’s interpreted as:
Flexibility-Rigidity (FR) describes how well you adapt to changes in your sleep schedule, while Languid-Vigorous (LV) reflects how alert you feel when sleep-deprived.
With so many ways to measure your sleep chronotype, it may be hard to know which one to choose. Here is a guide to help you:
Whether you’re an early-rising lion, a night-loving wolf, a go-with-the-flow bear, or a thoughtful dolphin, understanding your sleep chronotype can make a real difference. It’s not about changing who you are – it’s about working with your natural rhythm to feel more energised, focused, and in sync with your day. So go ahead and plan your mornings, meetings, workouts, and wind-downs in a way that actually suits you.
See all articles by Sophia Rimmer
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