Internet download speeds could be improved dramatically by mimicking Darwin’s evolution to “breed” the best networking strategies, say computer scientists.

They used “genetic algorithms,” which mimic Darwinian evolution, to develop strategies for Internet servers to use when caching data.

The algorithms take known variables, such as the number of times a piece of data is requested, the number of points it has to pass through and its overall size, and work out whether it should be stored and for how long.