The findings of a New Zealand zoologist have pointed engineers constructing complex networks, such as the World Wide Web and electrical grids, in a new direction: dolphins.

David Lusseau from University of Otago studied a community consisting of 64 bottlenose dolphins over a period of seven years. (1) He discovered the existence among them of a social structure similar to that in humans and human-made networks. The researcher's mathematical study was published in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society. (2)

Many complex networks, including human communities, possess features that make rapid exchanges of information between members possible.

This study by the New Zealand researcher shows that animal communities are also organised in such a way as to transfer information in a rapid and efficient manner. Long-lived creatures such as gorillas, deers, elephants and bottlenose dolphins rely on their environments in the information transfer. (3)

In his observations of dolphins, Lusseau focused on individuals that were seen together more frequently. He realised that these consisted for the most part of adult females, and that these served as transmission centres for the community.

In order to measure the information flows in a system it is sufficient to look at the hubs of information through which it passes and to count the number of elements required in the passage from the starting point to the end point. Lusseau employed this measurement technique, known as "diameter." When the results he obtained using this method were compared with the data revealed by the Internet he found himself confronted by an astonishing situation.

The duration of information transfer increased when a large number of points establishing connections on the Internet were eliminated. In the event that just 2% of the nodes with the most links on the Internet were left out of the system, it took twice as long to go from one element to another. Among dolphins, however, the situation was different.

Lusseau monitored the dolphins using markings on their dorsal fins and observed that when individuals acting as communications centres left the group, the community exhibited considerable resilience. The coherence of the dolphin community was not affected by the removal of key individuals. This resilience made it possible for the dolphin community to continue in a healthy manner even if one third of the population were absent.

The researcher states that thanks to this system the network can persist even in the face of catastrophic death. Moreover, he suggests that these features could be applied to human-made networks such as the World Wide Web.

As we have seen, there is an arrangement in dolphins that is better protected than the communication network that constitutes the Internet and that functions more effectively in the event that the main nodes are removed. The presence of such a feature in dolphins means that various criteria must have been calculated. For example, several stages, such as calculating the load to be applied to the connection points in the job of organising the Internet and estimating beforehand how the entire network will be affected if these are removed from the system, are carried out by network engineers and this permits information to travel in the system in the most efficient way possible. The existence of engineers who calculate and organise the flow of information on the Internet shows the existence of a superior intellect that regulates the information network in dolphins and many other similar living things in nature. There can be no doubt but that this superior intellect is that of Omniscient, Almighty God.

The creation of this information network in dolphins is a manifestation of His name of the Merciful. The Mercy of God is manifested in this information network thus:

The way that living things such as dolphins, which live in open waters and close to the surface, behave as a group is of vital importance. This lifestyle provides an advantage in terms of being on guard against predators, as well as when hunting. Thanks to the constant flow of information among the adult females in the group, other members are provided with information about the locations of prey and predators, as a result of which the group is assisted in behaving cohesively. If this flow of information in dolphins were to be impaired as a result of losses inflicted by predators, then the escape of other dolphins would be meaningless, and these individuals with no possibility of communicating would be forced to disperse and would eventually fall prey to other predators. However, the information network created in dolphins by God is not interrupted at such times, and allows individuals to survive by maintaining the cohesion of the group.

God reveals the following in one verse of the Qur'an:
"Truly your Lord is the Almighty, the Most Merciful." (Qur'an, 26:9)

1. David Lusseau, "The Emergent Properties of a Dolphin Social Network", http://arxiv.org/ftp/cond-mat/papers/0307/0307439.pdf
2 Lusseau, 2003 The emergent properties of a dolphin social network. Proceedings of the Royal Society of London-
Series B (Supplement): DOI 10.1098/rsbl.2003.0057
3. Danny Kingsley, “Dolphins better at networking than the Web”, ABC Science Online, 17 July 2004, http://www.abc.net.au/science/news/stories/s901670.htm