are killer whales whales or are they dolphins?

Question

people are telling me that they are dolphins but i dont believe them...so what are they?

Answer 1

They are in the dolphin family. They are the biggest dolphins. They call them killer because the way that they kill their food. People call them whales because they way they look but thy are really dolphins.

Answer 2

Jeez people, if you DON'T KNOW the answer, stop saying the wrong thing!!!

Killer whales are NOT, I repeat, NOT in the whale family!
They are in the DOLPHIN family!!!

The two links below show all the species in the dolphin and whale families.

Here is a quote from the first link:
"Orcas and some closely related species belong to the Delphinidae family and therefore qualify as dolphins, even though they are called whales in common language."

Common names are not to be taken literally all the time.
Examples:
A sea horse is a fish, not a horse.
A yellow jacket is a wasp, not an article of clothing.
A guinea pig is a rodent, not a swine.
The desert horned lizard is sometimes called a horned toad, even though it obviously is a lizard.

Answer 3

When I saw your question, I thought it was silly to think an Orca was a dolphin. But when I saw all the contradictory answers, I decided to look it up, and so I learned something.

According to Wikipedia (with many sources cited there), "The Orca or Killer Whale (Orcinus orca), less commonly, Blackfish or Seawolf, is the largest species of the oceanic dolphin family (Delphinidae). It is found in all the world's oceans, from the frigid Arctic and Antarctic regions to warm, tropical seas."

There is a lot of other excellent information in the Wikipedia article, and I'm happy to have learned something tonight! (See the article in the source link below.)

(It explains why they seem so much more intelligent than other whales - everybody knows that all dolphins are quite intelligent, but the Orca seemed to be an exception to general whale intelligence. Turns out it's not an exception in whales, but an included example of dolphins!)

Answer 4

The killer whale (Orcinus orca), commonly talked about as the orca, and a lot less commonly because the blackfish, is a toothed whale belonging to the oceanic dolphin relations. Killer whales are cutting-edge in all oceans, from the frigid Arctic and Antarctic areas to tropical seas. Killer whales as a species have a countless weight-loss plan, even in spite of the indisputable fact that human being populations commonly concentrate on certain sorts of prey. some feed completely on fish, at the same time as others hunt marine mammals jointly with sea lions, seals, walruses or maybe tremendous whales. Killer whales are referred to as apex predators, lacking organic predators.

Answer 5

They are both. The term Whale is a non-cladistic term. Meaning its a name given to several species that fit a certain description but are not necessarily related to eachother. If you want to know how Killer whales are related to other marine mammals, then you should know they are more closely related to dolphins and porpoises and not baleen whales like the blue or grey whales. But this is true for several other whale species as well, including the beluga and narwahl.

Answer 6

It is a kind of dolphin, but looks like a whale

Answer 7

They are, in fact, dolphins. They are in the same order as whales (Cetacea) but are members of the Delphinida (sp?) family which is comprised of dolphins, orcas, pilot whales and other dolphin looking sea mammals :)

Answer 8

Dolphin family

Answer 9

Dolphins; true whales don't have teeth. The white whale and the sperm whale are called whales, but they're not realy whales because they have teeth; white whales are dolphins, like the killer whale, and the sperm whale is classified apart.

Answer 10

killer whales are the largest member of the dolphin family; they are not whales.