Yeah, crepuscular animals are weird. They have circadian rhythms (the circadian clock is incredibly well conserved across vertebrates and to a lesser extent, across invertebrates), but I'm not actually entirely sure how their circadian clock work to get them to wake up at dawn/dusk

No need to use quotation marks - it is scientifically confirmed that night owls and early birds exist (among a number of other, less-well-known circadian types). We call them chronotypes, and it's an active field of study. Unfortunately it's not something that I specialize in, so I can't comment too much on it.

However, it is very well acknowledged in the field that modern society is built on an early bird schedule and that completely screws over night owls. (To my memory, night owls tend to score lower on tests, pursue higher education less than early birds, tend to be less promoted and generally less successful than early birds. Inversely, night owls tend to do better in evening classes than early birds.)

As a fellow night owl that gets pretty deep into the late night, I've had the idea that it is actually good to have a small percentage of the population awake while most of the others sleep to help keep watch. I don't have any way to prove this, but it's something that I feel makes sense.

You're right, I can't give medical advice. But having abnormally long or short circadian days is a known thing - called circadian diseases. It's not really my specialty, so I can't comment too much on it, but my understanding is that many of them are genetic. These genetic variations can cause the circadian clock to run slower or faster than normal (which happens to be adjacent to what I study, so I can talk about it in excruciating detail if desired)

The Familial Advanced Sleep Phase Syndrome (FASP) is one such genetic circadian disease that gets a lot of attention among the circadian field, but you almost certainly don't have it, since FASP makes your clock run shorter than 24 hours, whereas you seem to imply that yours runs longer.

The key thing to remember is that the circadian clock is not psychological. There is an actual, physical, molecular clock running in your brain and in nearly all the cells in your body. If this clock has imperfections, then that will directly lead to consequences in your circadian rhythms and your sleep cycle. The circadian clock is a real thing that people with the right equipment can measure and read. It wouldn't even be particularly hard - just a blood sample or a swab would be sufficient. To be honest, I myself would like to study your cells to see if there really is anything out of place, but that would probably break so many research and ethics rules.

Anyways, to answer your question, I would recommend getting a medical opinion - it might be worth specifically bringing up that you suspect you have a circadian disease. I'm not too sure about treatment options, since my impression has generally been that we kind of don't have any treatments for circadian diseases. But it's not really my specialty, so maybe there is. My memory is that melatonin is a masking cue, which basically means that it makes you sleep but it doesn't actually affect your circadian clock (which probably explains your poor experience with melatonin).

I have the exact same thing.

Ever heard of

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delayed_sleep_phase_disorder

?

We had a community on Reddit which I kinda miss, really small there as well but I'm not going back for it.

What's that? From googling I assume it's the artificial light at night one ?

Yeah, sure! This happens to be my field of research.

So I was referring to this particular paper, which unfortunately (to my knowledge) didn't get much follow-up.

Tangentially, there is much other evidence that circadian rhythms have evolved in part to deal with differences in microbial pathogens at the day vs. at night. However, whether it's because the composition of bacteria in the atmosphere is different, or because animals are more likely to get themselves exposed to pathogens when they're foraging, or a mix of both, is unclear. My favorite paper that demonstrates this effect is this one, where the circadian clock affects how strongly the immune system responds to bacteria in the lungs. I'll also include the seminal paper here that first kickstarted the idea that immunology is fundamentally circadian, although frankly I didn't like how the paper was written. It looked at how mice responded to Salmonella infection at the day vs. at night and found a difference in immune response that then led to a difference in how severe the infection got.

Ah, so this goes more into the nuance of what exactly determines the time of the circadian clock. It is very well documented that animals in the arctic circle still have circadian clocks even if it's perpetual light or dark. I left out for simplicity that the level of light matters - that is to say, if there's a time where it's slightly dimmer and a time that's slightly brighter, that is enough to adjust the circadian clock to the correct time. The adjustment process will be slower and weaker than usual, but it does happen.

Also, I hinted that animals do take in multiple measurements to determine the correct time, and that plays a role in this case. In general, light tends to be the measurement that animals will default to, but where light variation doesn't exist, animals can and do utilize other measurements to determine the time. Eating (among other things) turns out to be a relatively strong signal, so circadian rhythms end up being somewhat self-reinforcing. After all, I would expect that you only eat when you're awake.

But in general, circadian rhythms and the ways that animals adjust their rhythms to the correct time is a huge rabbithole

I've severe sleep problems.

I live on a quite a northern latitude. Finland, but the very southern end of it. (The Arctic circle only starts about at the most northern 1/3 of Finland)

I'll upload two pictures, taken from the same spot at different times.

Which one is later, which is earlier? One is taken at 00.30 and one at 2.30. No peeking at the exif data before guessing.

Sunset or sunrise?

Couldn't tell you, as we don't really have those in the way you do.

I mean, my night vision was always better than most...

But growing up as kids we'd be sprinting thru the woods playing tag at like 10pm summer nights, not a single electric light in sight

You're not going to recognize someone 100 yards away, but you're not walking around with your hands in front of your face to make sure you don't run into anything.

If you're under an open sky, or even a primitive shelter, you're not in complete darkness.

same, and i agree with you.

i mean yeah, but even then starlight is basically fuck all. The moon overpowers those, it just makes the sky look pretty. That's it.

Cloud cover would be primarily lit by moonlit. And even then, moon light is very dim. Just look at early moon light towers used to light up residential areas early in the electrification period.

It's literally the difference between being in your home, at night, and you can't see shit. Vs you can just barely make out where things are, and navigate properly.

Also semantic point, light pollution is not "dark" that's why you can't see any stars. Ever looked at a highway lit with LEDs recently? They have tons of light pollution that can be seen as what's referred to as "sky glow" My point here being, when you go outside in a light polluted area at night, it's literally not dark.

I think their point was that there isn't anything humans could do during the night. Stars might give some light, but without a full moon you really can't do anything at night without lights.