14 DAY TRIAL // Unlike most students, plants stay up all night not because there's some marathon running on TV, but because they're busy performing arithmetic division.
What's even more surprising is that, according to several researchers, they are pretty good at it.
Sources say that, during day time, plants use sun energy and carbon dioxide to produce sugar and starch.
Shortly after sunset, they start burning the starch they've produced during the day in order to stay alive.
By the looks of it, plants have to calculate how much starch they have at their disposal and adjust their rate of starch consumption each and every night.
Otherwise, they risk running out of this precious resource and dying.
“The calculations are precise so that plants prevent starvation but also make the most efficient use of their food.”
“If the starch store is used too fast, plants will starve and stop growing during the night. If the store is used too slowly, some of it will be wasted,” Professor Alison Smith explains.