Diurnal Nocturnal Animal

Animals in fiction tend to be shown being active at the wrong time of day or night. These terms describe when an animal is most active:

Categories

• Nocturnal - active primarily at night.
• Diurnal - active primarily during the day.
• Crepuscular - active primarily during both dawn and dusk. Many animals that are casually referred to as nocturnal are actually crepuscular. Though not generally active in the middle of the night, they are similarly absent in broad daylight.
  • Matutinal - active primarily during the dawn and/or early morning. The variant term, matinal is used only in entomology, often in literature about natural history and ecology of bees.
  • Vespertine - active primarily during the dusk and/or evening. Vespertine animals are usually referred to as nocturnal.
• Metaturnal - active part of the day and part of the night.
• Cathemeral - can be active at any time of the day or night; basically diurnal, nocturnal, and crepuscular combined.

Authors tend to ignore these restrictions. Happens particularly often to owls. It's worth noting that not all bats nor all owls are nocturnal.

This also happens to hamsters that are shown in the day, especially when they run a device that relies on Hamster-Wheel Power.

Compare Misplaced Wildlife, or Anachronism Stew for similar cases of time-displaced creatures. See also Daywalking Vampire for another creature of the night that goes out during the day.

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Examples:

Comic Books

• The Yagyu Clan from the Sonic the Hedgehog (Archie Comics) comic, being bats who attacked the heroes during the day. Though, this instance might be justified, as they're not Earth bats, they're Mobian bats. Ironically, their ninja get-up would make you think they'd be nocturnal.

Fan Works

• The Warriors Fix Fic Warriors Redux tries its best to fix this about the series. The cats now spend a lot of time active at night.

Film - Animation

• Ferngully: Batty Koda is a fruit bat who is active during the day. This is possibly justified, as some fruit bat taxa really are diurnal.
• The Fox and the Hound has Big Mama, the owl mentor of Tod, but her species is dubious and thus her diurnal/crepuscular/cathemeral/nocturnal deal.
• Madagascar: Maurice the aye-aye and Mort the Goodman's mouse lemur are both shown to be active during the day and sleep at night, even though both species are nocturnal in real life.
• Disney's Robin Hood has Robin Hood and Maid Marian as foxes. They stay awake during the day, despite foxes being crepuscular. And on the occasions where they come into human contact, foxes tend to become... nocturnal.
• The animals in Over the Hedge, RJ the raccoon being the most glaring example.
• The Secret Life of Pets has Myron, a hamster who assists Pops. He is shown to be active during the day, even though hamsters usually tend to be crepuscular. There is also a cameo of a hamster running on a wheel at the beginning of the movie.
• In The Sword in the Stone Archimedes is a diurnal owl. He is a wizard's Familiar though, which might explain it.
• Zootopia's main characters Judy (a rabbit) and Nick (a fox) both stay awake during the day. In real life, both species are crepuscular. Justified in that the mammals in the film have evolved and are fully anthropomorphic and sapient and therefore would be able to overcome biological imperatives regarding daylight hours. Jerry Jumbeaux Jr. does snidely ask Nick why he's visiting his ice cream parlor during the day, which seems to imply that foxes are, if nothing else, racially stereotyped as nocturnal/crepuscular.

Film - Live Action

• Messenger owls in Harry Potter can be sent at any time, day or night, no matter the species. Considering the setting and the distances they seem to cover in a very short time as well as the relative lack of care compared to what they really need, they may well be magic.
• Bagheera is seen sleeping at night in The Jungle Book, when leopards, both spotted and black, are usually more nocturnal.

Literature

• The Cold Moons contains a justified example. Bamber is on a long journey to warn other badgers about the badger cullings, so he's often up and about during the daylight. Most other badgers are nocturnal.
• Felicity Floo Visits the Zoo has owls flying around in the daytime.
• Harry Potter author J. K. Rowling has noted that snowy owls are actually one of the rare diurnal species, a fact she didn't realize when she started writing about how Hedwig would go out flying every night after a long day's rest. She suggests being a magical animal may have something to do with it in-universe, however. In the first chapter of Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone the Muggle news contains an item about how strange it is that so many owls are being seen in daylight, as a result of the magical community celebrating Voldemort's first downfall.
• Sleepy Bird, a picture book by Jeremy Tankard about a bird who doesn't want to go to bed, has this Played for Laughs. Bird travels around the forest trying to get various animals to play with him, but all of them tell him it's time for bed. At one point during this sequence, he encounters Raccoon, asks him to play, and is told "It's bedtime. I'm going to sing a soft lullaby and drift off to sleep."
  Bird: But you're NOCTURNAL! Why won't anyone play?
• The main group in Seekers consists of grizzly bears, polar bears, and black bears, yet they all interact at the same time and they're all most active in the afternoon.
• A Sick Day for Amos McGee: The owl is seen awake in the daytime (perhaps due to his fear of the dark).
• Wolves and dogs are crepuscular. In Survivors, the dogs may or may not be crepuscular. They get up early, spend a lot of the afternoon inactive, and usually are asleep during the night. But the schedule seems to change dog-to-dog depending on their rank. For example, some dogs patrol in the middle of the night to make sure the territory is safe.
• Warrior Cats by Erin Hunter has the cats be active mainly in the daylight. Word of God states that it is to prevent most of the scenes happening in dark. Real life cats can be active anytime of the day or night and cannot see in complete darkness, needing at least some light in order to see (which is usually provided by the moon).

Video Games

• The Legend of Zelda:
  • That blabbering owl, Kaepora Gaebora from The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, is cathemeral, always ready to give you pages and pages of trivial, useless information, no matter what time it is. "Hoo hoo hoot! Do you want me to repeat?"
  Yes ←
  No
  • There's also the the Wise Owl from Link's Awakening but this is handwaved when at the end it turns out he's a dream construct.
  • The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild has Kaneli, the owl-like elder of the Rito tribe who is awake throughout the day.
• Pokémon:
  • Zig-Zagged in Pokémon. While most species can be found in both day and night, there are some found only in the morning or twilight, based on their real-animal counterparts.
  • Hoothoot and Noctowl can be sent out at any time, though they can only be caught at night, which is strange the other way, as Hoothoot is based on the diurnal Burrowing Owl.
  • An in-universe mistake caused an invasive predator problem in the Alolan islands. Yungoos' were brought to the islands to fix the Ratatta problem, but Yungoos are active during the day while Alola's Rattata are active during the night. This mixup led to both species being deemed invasive pests. This is based off a real occurrence from Hawaii where mongoose were brought in to kill rats, but it didn't work as planned due to their differing sleep cycles.
• SongBird Symphony: Without surprise, the Owl.
• Rouge from Sonic the Hedgehog is an anthropomorphic bat that is awake during the day.
• Rolling Sky 2: In Home (along with the pre-alpha version of Pharaohs), there is an owl that can carry you across the area your character is in after they touch a flute. In both levels, it’s clearly daytime.
  • This might be a possible aversion, though, as the owl has yellow eyes like diurnal ones.

Western Animation

• Owl from The Animals of Farthing Wood.
• In Archer, whenever Cheryl's pet ocelot, Babou, is mentioned, someone will usually mention that he's crepuscular. Even though ocelots really are crepuscular, in the show the mention is usually in a context that makes little to no sense.
  Mounties: (while getting attacked by Babou) He's crepuscular! Get him boys!
• Birdz:
  • Played with Sleepy Bat who is awake during the day, but is constantly falling asleep.
  • Played straight with Olivia Owl.
• Played with on Dinosaur Train - the Troodons claim to be nocturnal, like their real-life counterparts and even have a song about it. Yet they are still shown most of the time operating the Dinosaur Train during the day.
• Elinor Wonders Why:
  • Ari is a bat, yet he and his family tend to be awake at day and asleep at night.
  • A variation in "Owl Girl". While on the subject of discovering animals who are awake at night, we see Mr. Raccoon (who works at day) having to go to the bakery in the middle of the night to prepare the baked goods.
• Fluffy Gardens:
  • Oona the owl is diurnal because she's afraid of the dark.
  • Played with in the case of Floella the bat. The narrator states she is nocturnal, which is shown to be true in her focus episode and Oona's focus episode. However, there are plenty of episodes where she's active during the day.
• On Franklin, well... everyone that shouldn't normally be up during the day with the other characters, with the sole exception of Bat. This includes Rabbit, Fox, Raccoon and Mr. Owl. As an added bonus, there's also Bear and his family who are bears, but don't hibernate.
• Deconstructed in Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends, where Herriman insists that even a nocturnal owl friend be up during the day, helping. Frankie protests against this and eventually runs for the administrative position of Foster's, among her campaign promises to adjust sleeping schedules to accommodate nocturnal friends.
• Played with on Miss Spider's Sunny Patch Friends also - Eddy Earwig attends school during the day but is usually tired because he's nocturnal.
• Molly of Denali: In "Busy Beavers," the kids observe the beavers mostly during the day, while real-life beavers are generally nocturnal. Justified as they do have young, which typically means being active at any given hour.
• Originally averted with Owloiscious in My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic, when Twilight appoints Owloiscious to be her second assistant so Spike can get enough sleep at night/early morning. Played straight in "May the Best Pet win" when he's present during the regular pet play date in the middle of the day.
• On PB&J Otter, the Raccoon family is a straight example with the exception of the father, Mr. Raccoon, who has a nighttime job and sleeps during the day.
• Phineas and Ferb has Perry the Platypus, who is active during the daytime even though real-life platypuses are nocturnal.
• On Wild Animal Baby Explorers, Izzy the owl goes out exploring during the day with the other characters.
• Owl from Winnie the Pooh. Though at least one of the Disney book releases, What Good Are Bugs?, makes a reference to a character being unable to wake him up during the day. Double Subverted when it turns out this is only because the noise of the bugs has been keeping him from sleeping at night.

Real Life

• Big cats and other crepuscular mammals, to a lesser extent, have been noted to increasingly become diurnal in regions where they are no longer hunted (and vice versa), suggesting that the line is murkier than usual.
• Raccoons are nocturnal/crepuscular, but some can be seen during the day. This can be common in areas where raccoons have adapted to being fed by humans. Point Defiance Park in Washington State has raccoons that spend the day begging for food from park visitors during the daytime hours (despite signage asking people to not feed the raccoons).
• Much like raccoons, skunks are typically crepuscular unless there is reason otherwise (such as to find food or because their living spot is disturbed), in which they are often active during the day.
• Generally, yellow-eyed owls such as snowy owls and burrowing owls are diurnal and orange-eyed owls such as great horned owls and Eurasian eagle owls are crepuscular or nocturnal.
• Most members of the squirrel family are diurnal except flying squirrels, which are nocturnal.
• All monkeys are diurnal except douroucoulis (AKA night monkeys or owl monkeys), which are nocturnal.
• Numbats are diurnal, unlike most other marsupials.
• Coyotes are usually crepuscular/nocturnal, but can often be seen during daylight hours. They were once essentially diurnal, but have adapted to more nocturnal behavior with pressure from humans.
• Certain animals that are normally nocturnal will sometimes end up displaying diurnal behavior if kept in captivity, such as at a zoo or something, and are fed during the daytime, no longer having to hunt at night. For animals that won't or shouldn't adapt this way, and that can be kept indoors, zoos may house them in a dedicated building where the daylight hours are artificially reversed so that daytime visitors can watch their activity and bump into each other. The Bronx Zoo, for example, had a "World of Darkness" exhibit until 2009.
• Domestication can change an animal's sleeping behavior. Dogs have adapted to be most active during the afternoon like humans, however their wolf ancestors are more prone to activity at night.
• As bizarre as it may seem, the Blyth's horseshoe bat is a diurnal species. Scientists are studying it to understand why other species are nocturnal.

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