Animals need natural periodic signals like sunrise to maintain a cycle whose period is precisely 24 hours.
[■]Such an external cue not only coordinates an animal's daily rhythms with particular features of the local solar day but also—because it normally does so day after day-seems to keep the internal clock's period close to that of Earth's rotation. [■]Yet despite this synchronization of the period of the internal cycle, the animal's timer itself continues to have its own genetically built-in period close to, but different from, 24 hours. [■]Without the external cue, the difference accumulates and so the internally regulated activities of the biological day drift continuously, like the tides, in relation to the solar day. [■]This drift has been studied extensively in many animals and in biological activities ranging from the hatching of fruit fly eggs to wheel running by squirrels. Light has a predominating influence in setting the clock. Even a fifteen-minute burst of light in otherwise sustained darkness can reset an animal's circadian rhythm. Normally, internal rhythms are kept in step by regular environmental cycles. For instance, if a homing pigeon is to navigate with its Sun compass, its clock must be properly set by cues provided by the daylight/darkness cycle.Because the internal signals that regulate waking and going to sleep tend to align themselves with these external cues, the external clock appears to dominate the internal clock..