Wonders of Allah in Dolphins

For dolphins, breathing is not a reflex, as it is for humans and other land mammals, but rather a voluntary movement. In other words, dolphins decide to breathe like we decide to walk. There is also a precaution taken in order to prevent the animal's being drowned while sleeping in water. While sleeping, the dolphin uses the right and left hemisphere of his brain in turn, at approximately 15-minute intervals. While one cerebral hemisphere sleeps, the dolphin uses the other to come to the surface for air.

Dolphins breathe using their lungs just like other mammals, which means they cannot breathe in the water like fish. For this reason, they routinely come up to the water's surface to breathe. On the top of their heads is a hole enabling them to do just that. The bodies of dolphins have such a perfect design that, when it dives into the water, this hole is automatically closed by a cap, thus preventing water from leaking into the dolphin's body. When the animal comes up to the water's surface, the cap then reopens.

The snout of the dolphin's beak is another design facilitating the movements of the animal through water. By means of this structure, the animal uses less energy in cutting through the water and swimming at higher speeds. Modern ships, too, make use of a bow like the dolphin's snout, hydrodynamically designed to increase the speed of ships just like dolphins.

In addition, dolphins can swim at such great speeds that they dazzle scientists. There is a smooth flow of water around the bodies of dolphins. Research carried out on the skin of dolphins has discovered the reason for this flow. The skin of a dolphin consists of three layers. The outer layer is thin and very elastic. The middle layer is mostly composed of connective tissue and it has appendages looking like a plastic brush which anchor the outer layer to the middle layer. The third, inner, layer consists of bundles of elastic fibers. Therefore, when turbulence begins to form in the water around the speedily swimming dolphin, the outer skin transmits the extreme pressure caused by this turbulence to the inner layers and they absorb it. Thus, the turbulence that was beginning to develop disappears before it was able to grow.

All of these structures, ones exclusive only to dolphins among all other animals, are clear evidence of an intelligent design. Allah has created dolphins, like all other creatures, with their body structures in conformity with their surroundings.