Are Dophins mammals? Porposes are, but are dolphins?

Answer 1

It depends on the kind of dolphin you're talking about.

The most commonly thought-of kinds of dolphins, which look a lot like porpoises, are air-breathing mammals. They are typically 5 to 8 feet long.

But there is also a dolphin fish, also called a pompano or mahi-mahi, which is a true fish and not a mammal. Dolphin fish are brightly colored, have large heads, and are typically two to three feet long. These are the kind of dolphins seen on the insignia of US Navy submariners.

Answer 2

Yes, porpoises are a type of dolphin, and all dolphins are cetaceans. As all mammals, cetaceans have hair (even if it's very reduced as an adaptation to marine life), feed their young with milk from mammary glands, and have many characteristics of their skeleton and soft anatomy that define them as mammals. One of the easiest ones is that their lower jaw is made up of a single bone, the dentary. In all the rest of the tetrapods, the lower jaw has more than one bone, but in mammals, these other bones are either lost or have become the middle ear ossicles.
So if you ever find a skeleton, you can tell if it's a mammal just by checking their jaw!

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Update: nicer_planets, horses do _not_ have 5 toes inside their hooves. They have one well developed finger (the 3rd one) and the very reduced remains of nºs 2 and 4 (these do not touch the ground).

Answer 3

There is a fish called a dolphin, they are kinda like tuna. The North Atlantic Bottle nose Dolphin is a mammal, there are other species of mammal dolphins too (I believe). These animals are magnificent.

Answer 4

The Dolphin, like the bottlelnose is definately a mammal. But there is also a fish that is called a 'dolphin'. I believe that this is also referred to as Mahi-Mahi ( on the restaurant menu at least)

Answer 5

Whales, dolphins, and porpoises are all members of the scientific order cetacea (Pronounced: suh-TAY-sha). As cetaceans, they are warm blooded, bear their young alive. and the babies nurse their mother's milk. Cetaceans live entirely in water but must breathe air through their lungs. They have fishlike bodies with a thick layer of fat or blubber to keep them warm. Cetaceans also have flippers for front limbs, but do not have hind limbs. Unlike most other mammals, they have very little body hair.

Answer 6

Yep! Both are mammals. Dolphins and Porpoises are actually both kinds of whales (order Cetacea) which is categorized in the class Mammalia.

Answer 7

dolphins give birth to live and feed them milk, they breath the same air we doand no gills just like the porpose i would say the only differance is the name. in conculsion YES dolphins are mammals

Answer 8

Dolphins are ungulates - the branch of the mammal family where most species have hooves (pig, girraffe, reindeer, etc). They have 5-toed foot inside each flipper, like a horse has within each hoof.

Answer 9

Yes, Dolphins are mammal!

Answer 10

They have lungs, they feed their youngsters with milk, they present Small hairs, they have a placenta, they have glands on their skin, yessss, that makes them mammal fellows