Are dolphins considered whales?
Dolphins, whales and cetaceans.

ANSWER TO QUESTION:
Dear Steve,
     I wrote you and told you that dolphins are indeed (never trust people who use the word indeed) whales, and that is still my opinion.  But not everyone agrees with me (and I am not a whale biologist), so it requires a little more explanation than I gave you in my e-mail response.

     If you look around the web or look in a lot of other sources for information on whales (like books - books are still the best place for information - go there often) you will find, as I did, that some people say dolphins are whales and some people seem to say dolphins are not whales. It is common for even scientists to separate these marine mammals into whales, porpoises, and dolphins (in fact this seems to be the norm). And sometimes the same people who say, or at least imply, that dolphins and porpoises are not whales will turn right around and tell you that dolphins are members of the "toothed whale" club (club is not an official science word), or more correctly, the suborder "Odontoceti".  And so the confusion starts.  Apparently they are "toothed whales" but not whales!?

Well darn it anyway! What's going on?

Will the Correct Taxonomist Please Stand Up?
     Somewhere in the many hallowed halls of big time education places there are scientists called taxonomists (no they didn't invent taxes) who have taken it upon themselves to classify all living things into kingdoms, phylums, classes, orders (and sometimes suborders), families, genuses, and last but not quite last, species (there are also subspecies sometimes). These are lonely nit-picky people who argue amongst themselves and lose sleep at night worrying whether or not dolphins are whales. Well, actually, what they really worry about is the confusion that is caused by every day non-whale biologist ordinary Joe's like you and I using such unclear words as dolphin and whale.

     We have met the problem and it is us. We laypersons tend to not be too careful with our words. When most of us say whales we mean something kind of vague but generally a lot bigger than a dolphin. And when we say dolphin, we mean the little "smiling" guys that put on shows for us at places like Marine World. But what about killer whales. They are supposedly in the same suborder as dolphins (and even in the same family - Delphinidae) but they have whale in their name. The same is true of pilot whales and narwhals (note that whal is not whale) and beaked whales and bottlenose whales.

     Well, let's be frank about this (you be Frank and I'll be Earnest). It doesn't really matter that much to most laypersons (except us know-it-alls who like to show how much we know by correcting people who don't know as much as we do), but it matters to whale biologists. It is important when they talk or write to each other that they be very clear so that there are no misunderstandings. Or at least as few misunderstandings as possible. So what do whale taxonomists do? They decide which whales are related to which other whales and organize them all into families and orders and genuses and species. Then they make up very precise names (with the help of an old language like Latin) and define as precisely as possible what that name applies to. Then everybody knows just what they are talking about. Even people who speak different languages know. Whether they speak Russian or Spanish or Swahili, they all know that a Balaenoptera Musculs is a blue whale and a Tursiops Truncatus is a bottlenose dolphin.

Will the Real Cetacean Please Swim Forward
     Since general words like whale and dolphins can be a unclear they use another word. The word they use is cetacean. They are all cetaceans. All whales, dolphins, and porpoises are cetaceans. No one is allowed to argue about this (in theory - in reality there is always discussion and things are always changing).
     So chill out! The next time someone starts to argue about whether or not a dolphin is a whale just roll your eyes, smile smugly, and say, "I don't get bogged down in such silly arguments. To a marine biologist they are all cetaceans".

     (And, of course, you can also tell them that Dr. Galapagos says a dolphin is a whale is a cetacean. That should settle it.)

And What About Chelonians?
     I might also add that word confusion like this is an issue in all fields of science. Another good biology example of this are the words turtle and tortoise. Most people would say a tortoise is a turtle but a turtle is not necessarily a tortoise. But some people say a turtle is never a tortoise because turtles live in water and tortoises live only on dry land. Starting to get confused again? Just when you thought you were starting to understand? Well don't worry about it. Be happy! Taxonomists have again come to the rescue.
     Turtle and/or tortoise experts have their own word too! Their word is chelonian. The five dollar word for reptiles with shells that most of us call turtles or tortoises is chelonian.
They are all chelonians.
And this web site should have been called the Flying Chelonian. And I, Dr. Galapagos, am a know-it-all Chelonian (who hates water).

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Teeth or Baleen?       Here is how the taxonomist guys tell us to classify whales, er, I mean cetaceans.      First there is the Kingdom. They are in the animal kingdom, or Animalia, to be all "Latiny" about it.      Next there is a Phylum. Cetaceans are in the Chordata phylum, which means they are vertebrates (they've got backbone).      Of course, they've got Class, lots of class. They are in the Mammalia class. That's us too! We humans are mammals too. Just like the whales. How cool is that?       Next comes Order. Their order is Cetacea. Proud members of the Order of the Cetacea.      Sometimes there are Suborders (no, it's not what you get at Subway). There are two suborders, toothed whales and baleen whales, in the Cetacean order. We'll define them in another article. The scientist name for toothed whales is Odontoceti. The scientist name for baleen whales is Mysticeti. (Because they are so mysterious?) Baleen whales include blue whales (really really big), fin whales, right whales (there are no wrong whales), gray whales, humpbacks and others.      After suborder comes Family. Killer whales and dolphins are in the Dolphinidae family. By our count there are 11 cetacean families.      After Family comes Genus. Check out the table below to see some examples of genus and species names.      Finally, we get to the specific Species. A good source tells us there are 79 known species of cetaceans.      The further down the list you go the more alike the animals get. Animals of the same species are so much alike they can reproduce and their offspring can reproduce more of the same.      Click on this to see a table of some examples of how whales are classified.

The friendly looking (but not really smiling) cetacean above is a Beluga whale. The drawing below represents a beluga family.