To sustain themselves through a night, plants have to perform what are essentially mathematic calculations according to newly published documents by researchers in the U.K.

The scientific journal eLife recently published research indicating that plants have the ability to perform "arithmetic division computation" in order to parcel their stored food reserves throughout the night so they do not starve in the absence of their food source, the sun.

The discovery of this phenomenon by scientists at the John Innes Centre in the U.K. came about from their observation that at night, the starch in the leaves of the plants they were studying decreased linearly with time so that by dawn, 95% of the stored starch is used up.

"This pattern"?(R)? is achieved even when darkness comes unexpectedly early," reported Alexander Graf, one of the project's researchers.

Based on the results of their experiments, the scientists theorize that once the sun sets, the plants have a mechanism that measures their starch content and the expected length of the night, then arithmetically divides these two quantities to figure out the rate that they should consume their food store.

The research also pointed out that in order for this to take place, the plants would have to possess a circadian clock, which gives them the ability to sense external time cues.

Among the proof cited, was the finding that similar plants with mutant defects, showed signs of starvation.

The researchers concluded that their "results are potentially relevant for any biological system dependent on a food reserve for survival over a predictable time period."