If you think waking up early in the morning is a drag, try telling that to the cockroaches. These icky fellas will probably rant and rave their feelers off if they could speak. That's what scientists at the Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee found out.

In a study of how biological clocks affect learning in different animals, it was determined that cockroaches were pretty adept at learning tasks at night, while they were utter dunces during the daytime.

Over two years, the biologists trained hundreds of these critters to associate the smell of peppermint (which roaches hate) with sugar water so that they favored it over one of their favorite scents - vanilla. The disparity in the tests were amazing.

It was documented that roaches trained during the daytime could not learn the task no matter what approach was taken. In contrast, night time roaches learned pretty quickly and would remember the lesson for days on end.

"This study was a surprise from the beginning to the end --the fact that cockroaches could be trained, even though you would not generally say they are a high IQ creature," says biologist Terry Page as he expresses how amazed he was with the impact of biological clocks on learning abilities.

"An interesting question is why the animal would not want to learn at that particular time of day. We have no idea," concludes Page.