Internal Clocks and Weight Gain

[Camelidae4]

I was wondering if anyone had any opinions on the time of day treats/food enrichment are given? I went to a neuroscience conference not too long ago and the keynote speaker talked a ton about circadian rhythms. He highlighted relationships between internal clocks and feeding/activity times- basically if a nocturnal animal primarily eats during the daylight hours then they are more likely to gain weight. This same logic applies to diurnal and crepuscular animals. Any opinions on this? Should I try to only give food based enrichment to my rats before I go to bed?

I can't find the research of the keynote speaker, but here is something similar to what he was talking about: Food Intake during the Normal Activity Phase Prevents Obesity and Circadian Desynchrony in a Rat Model of Night Work
I do not recommend reading if you do not support ratties as lab animals it was just a quick search for an article related to this topic.

 

[Big Schpog]

I don't know anything about this so thank you for posting. My rats have a clock. They are up twice, once in the late morning/early afternoon, 12: 30pm for breakfast for a couple hours and I take them for walks and play. Then they go to sleep at around 3-4 pm and sleep until about 10pm when they wake again for their nighttime activity. I do not wake my rats when they sleep. I allow them to have their natural sleep cycles. I also notice that one of my rats doesn't sleep as long as the others. She is the smallest (210 grams full grown). My other two girls are rather big at 500 grams and they will not wake once they go for their late afternoon sleep. They're out like lights once they go for their afternoon sleep.