# Are orcas dolphins? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [December 6, 2011, 12:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-orcas-dolphins/605199 "2011-12-06T00:05:51Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![Darwins\_Finch](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/darwins_finch/32/20304_2.png) [@Darwins\_Finch](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Darwins_Finch)\ **Post date:** [December 7, 2011, 6:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-orcas-dolphins/605199/41 "2011-12-07T06:33:02Z")
> [@Senegoid](#): > > These critters belong to three families within the cetaceans: Delphinidae, Phocoenidae, and Stenidae. Not anymore. Stenidae is no longer a valid Cetacean taxon, since it turns out that it was preoccupied (by, as is so often the case, a type of beetle) before folks tried to stuff _Steno_ into it. So now, it’s Stenoninae. ---
**Author:** ![Senegoid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/senegoid/32/6606_2.png) [@Senegoid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Senegoid)\ **Post date:** [December 7, 2011, 7:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-orcas-dolphins/605199/42 "2011-12-07T07:12:47Z")
> [@Darwins\_Finch](#): > > Not anymore. Stenidae is no longer a valid Cetacean taxon, since it turns out that it was preoccupied (by, as is so often the case, a type of beetle) before folks tried to stuff _Steno_ into it. So now, it’s Stenoninae. Well well, this is news to me. (I’ve been rather out of the cetology biz since 1984.) I just tried googling stenidae and stenoninae, and found many citations that looked like they might be this, but none that I could get any real information from. All had illegible screen shots from some book I should buy, or just took me to other search engine pages, or mentioned stenidae or sotalia or something in connection with paleobiology, or other unhelpful stuff. I did get reminded, however, that the river dolphins are Platanistidae. And I just found [this site](http://library.thinkquest.org/17963/superfamily-Platanistoidae.html) which says: > [@](#): > > River dolphins are only very distantly related to oceanic dolphins. They are not classified under the family Delphinidae. In fact they comprise several families, including **Iniidae, Platanistidae, Lipotidae, and Pontoporiidae.** Most of them live in some of the world’s largest and most complex river systems: the Amazon, the Indus and Ganges, and the Yangtze. One species, the Franciscana, is actually found in the estuaries on the southeastern coast of South America. They are perplexing creatures, having both some of the most advanced characteristics of all living cetaceans and some evolutionary holdovers from many eons past. River dolphins most likely descend from marine cetaceans, as some fossils of the family Iniidae have been found in oceanic environments. It is believed that all odontocetes are at least primitively marine. They probably came about through convergent evolution, with similar habitats selecting similar characteristcs. They may not be closely related to each other at all. (Boldface added.) Do you have a cite with a good current explanation of stenidae and stenoninae? ---
**Author:** ![Darwins\_Finch](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/darwins_finch/32/20304_2.png) [@Darwins\_Finch](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Darwins_Finch)\ **Post date:** [December 7, 2011, 3:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-orcas-dolphins/605199/43 "2011-12-07T15:06:20Z")
About the best I can find at the moment is [is this](http://www.marinespecies.org/cetacea/aphia.php?p=taxdetails&id=383328). Unfortunately, it doesn’t give the whys or wherefores. All the insect references I could find online are to various old books (I believe it’s not used anymore as an insect taxon, either, so it’s invalid all around; for bugs, the correct taxon these days appears to be Staphylinidae). ---
**Author:** ![jayjay](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jayjay/32/6765_2.png) [@jayjay](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jayjay)\ **Post date:** [December 7, 2011, 3:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-orcas-dolphins/605199/44 "2011-12-07T15:17:02Z")
> [@Darwins\_Finch](#): > > About the best I can find at the moment is [is this](http://www.marinespecies.org/cetacea/aphia.php?p=taxdetails&id=383328). Unfortunately, it doesn’t give the whys or wherefores. All the insect references I could find online are to various old books (I believe it’s not used anymore as an insect taxon, either, so it’s invalid all around; for bugs, the correct taxon these days appears to be Staphylinidae). Did you ever get the impression that the Taxonomy Gnomes spend all day, every day, just planning changes in nomenclature that are specifically calculated to send whole legions of biologists of varying specialties into hair-pulling fits? ---
**Author:** ![Colibri](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/colibri/32/1841_2.png) [@Colibri](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Colibri)\ **Post date:** [December 7, 2011, 4:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-orcas-dolphins/605199/45 "2011-12-07T16:21:36Z")
> [@jayjay](#): > > Did you ever get the impression that the Taxonomy Gnomes spend all day, every day, just planning changes in nomenclature that are specifically calculated to send whole legions of biologists of varying specialties into hair-pulling fits? I particularly hate the classical scholars who decide to research the gender of generic names and then force changes in the specific name to conform to the new gender. ---
**Author:** ![jayjay](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jayjay/32/6765_2.png) [@jayjay](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jayjay)\ **Post date:** [December 7, 2011, 4:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-orcas-dolphins/605199/46 "2011-12-07T16:36:16Z")
> [@Colibri](#): > > I particularly hate the classical scholars who decide to research the gender of generic names and then force changes in the specific name to conform to the new gender. They really do that? It’s not like you’re actually _speaking_ classical Latin when you’re using taxonomical nomenclature. Some people have far too much time on their hands. ---
**Author:** ![Bear\_Nenno](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bear_nenno/32/3358_2.png) [@Bear\_Nenno](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bear_Nenno)\ **Post date:** [December 7, 2011, 4:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-orcas-dolphins/605199/47 "2011-12-07T16:48:05Z")
> [@Senegoid](#): > > (Sea Life Park in Honolulu has, or had, some Steno dolphins. They are reputedly the smartest dolphins you’ll ever find.) When I hear “Steno Dolphin”, I think of a Rough-Toothed dolphin. We referred to them as “Stenos” because they are the only dolphin in the _Steno_ genus. But _Steno bredanensis_ are still in the _Delphinidae_ Family. Is it possible these are the dolphins Sea Life Park had? ---
**Author:** ![jjimm](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/ba8739/32.png) [@jjimm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jjimm)\ **Post date:** [December 7, 2011, 5:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-orcas-dolphins/605199/48 "2011-12-07T17:39:11Z")
> [@Senegoid](#): > > Congratulations! You’ve just received the world’s first [All-Porpoise Greeting Card](http://sameindifference.files.wordpress.com/2011/08/multi-porpoise-card.jpg) That is absolutely fantastic. I’m flipping out here. ---
**Author:** ![Tom\_Tildrum](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/e95f7d/32.png) [@Tom\_Tildrum](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tom_Tildrum)\ **Post date:** [December 7, 2011, 7:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-orcas-dolphins/605199/49 "2011-12-07T19:00:36Z")
> [@Senegoid](#): > > (Sea Life Park in Honolulu has, or had, some Steno dolphins. They are reputedly the smartest dolphins you’ll ever find.) I don’t know about that. I took some of my word-processing projects down to the Steno pool when I first started working at the zoo, and they botched them. ---
**Author:** ![Bear\_Nenno](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bear_nenno/32/3358_2.png) [@Bear\_Nenno](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bear_Nenno)\ **Post date:** [December 7, 2011, 7:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-orcas-dolphins/605199/50 "2011-12-07T19:33:56Z")
Not to mention we used to have a permanent-resident Steno who was deemed unreleasable. Her problem was that she would eat _anything_ that fell into the pool. Leaves, trash, pine cones… anything! She’s had her stomach pumped more times than Lil Kim. Not very smart indeed. ---
**Author:** ![Senegoid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/senegoid/32/6606_2.png) [@Senegoid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Senegoid)\ **Post date:** [December 7, 2011, 8:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-orcas-dolphins/605199/51 "2011-12-07T20:22:24Z")
> [@Bear\_Nenno](#): > > When I hear “Steno Dolphin”, I think of a Rough-Toothed dolphin. We referred to them as “Stenos” because they are the only dolphin in the _Steno_ genus. But _Steno bredanensis_ are still in the _Delphinidae_ Family. Is it possible these are the dolphins Sea Life Park had? Yes, they had (maybe still have?) a Rough-Toothed dolphin – They’ve had several. You’re right, I just googled it myself, it’s a Delphinidae. I just always assumed it was Stenidae because of the obvious similarity to the name Steno. Ignorance fought! Another nearby post mentions that Stenos can’t be all that smart – he always had problems when he took his documents down to the Steno pool. Maybe they just hired the less-bright Stenos at low wages. Karen Pryor, former head trainer and curator at Sea Life Park, wrote something to the effect (quoting as nearly as I can remember): “Our trainers said that with Stenos, you just wrote the day’s training plan on a greaseboard and lowered it into the water for them to read.” (From _Lads Before The Wind_ by Karen Pryor, her memoir of her adventures there.) ETA: BTW, IIRC, Karen Pryor always referred to them as porpoises, not dolphins. She wrote that she did this simply because that’s what the Navy did. ---
**Author:** ![shantih](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/f6c823/32.png) [@shantih](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/shantih)\ **Post date:** [December 7, 2011, 9:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-orcas-dolphins/605199/52 "2011-12-07T21:02:57Z")
Incidentally, the conversation group met again today and I started things off with a new icebreaker: let’s all share a story of a time that we were wrong. I’ll start! Everyone got a big laugh out of it and the slight sting to my pride was more than offset by the giant tin of Quality Street chocolates set up on the conference table. I must say that I’m finding all this fascinating – at the beginning, it was such a no-brainer to me that orcas and dolphins are completely separate (if related) creatures. I had had no idea that dolphin was both a colloquial term for the Flipper-like creature and also the term used for all delphinids. I do like the analogy to cats, and that whether a lion counts as a cat depends on how you define the word in that case. When the same guy made the claim today that you can legally drink beer while driving (in Germany), I was careful not to state that he couldn’t possibly be right but that in my opinion, that sounded unusual. Turns out, he was right again. Please do keep on with the classification discussion – I’m sitting here going ‘Huh!’ a lot. ---
**Author:** ![jjimm](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/ba8739/32.png) [@jjimm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jjimm)\ **Post date:** [December 8, 2011, 4:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-orcas-dolphins/605199/53 "2011-12-08T04:34:06Z")
> [@shantih](#): > > Incidentally, the conversation group met again today and I started things off with a new icebreaker: let’s all share a story of a time that we were wrong. I’ll start! Nice work. I must ask a dumb question though: what’s a conversation group? ETA: clarification: clearly I know it’s a group that has conversations. What I mean is, what’s its purpose? Is it for people who don’t get a chance to engage in philosophical debate, or the elderly, or housebound etc.? I’ve not heard of such a thing before. ---
**Author:** ![shantih](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/f6c823/32.png) [@shantih](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/shantih)\ **Post date:** [December 8, 2011, 7:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-orcas-dolphins/605199/54 "2011-12-08T07:02:40Z")
Sorry for the obscurity! I’m a freelance TOFL teacher in Germany and this is an English conversation group that I lead at an IT firm to sharpen up the speaking skills of the fellows there. I was actually delighted by this disagreement, as it led to a lively debate with everyone coming up with reasons for their opinions and considering what the others had to say. ---
**Author:** ![Senegoid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/senegoid/32/6606_2.png) [@Senegoid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Senegoid)\ **Post date:** [December 8, 2011, 7:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-orcas-dolphins/605199/55 "2011-12-08T07:22:08Z")
> [@shantih](#): > > \ > When the same guy made the claim today that you can legally drink beer while driving (in Germany), I was careful not to state that he **couldn’t possibly be right** but that in my opinion, that sounded unusual. Turns out, he was right again. > > Please do keep on with the classification discussion – I’m sitting here going ‘Huh!’ a lot. I’m sure you could declare with confidence, at the very least, that drinking beer while driving _ **couldn’t possibly be a good idea** _, especially on the Autobahn! As for the classification thingy – What do y’all think a “marine mammal” is? The [Marine Mammal Protection Act of 1972](http://www.nmfs.noaa.gov/pr/laws/mmpa/) gave strong protection to all marine mammals, which were collectively considered to be endangered species. (See also [Wikipedia article](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marine_Mammal_Protection_Act) and discussion by [The Marine Mammal Center](http://www.marinemammalcenter.org/what-we-do/rescue/marine-mammal-protection-act.html), a rescue operation in the San Francisco area.) But the Act painted all marine mammals with one brush, failing to distinguish that the species all had different population dynamics, different predation patterns and other population pressures. Blue Whales and California Grey Whales, for example, were highly depleted through over-hunting. But since protection, the Blue Whale population has been recovering very painfully slowly, while the Grey Whale population has rebounded very well. Elephant seals were hunted to near extinction about a century ago, reduced to a known population of just one little colony. They have since rebounded greatly, and are now all over the place along the California coast. California Sea Lion populations have grown so greatly that they are taking over the world. Fisherman’s Wharf area of San Francisco is completely overrun with them. [Photo of Sea Lions and People](http://www.inetours.com/Pages/SF-photos/Wharf/Watching-Sea-Lions.html), with Golden Gate Bridge in the background. Just go to google images and search for fishermans wharf sea lions for many more. So there has long been debate as to whether the Act got it right by protecting all marine mammal species indiscriminately, and also as to exactly what species should be called marine mammals. In the mid 1980’s, when I was involved with such things, there was debate as to whether polar bears counted as marine mammals. (The Act explicitly says yes, but that might be a later amendment.) People tried to nail down exactly what characteristic of marine mammals made them marine mammals. Was it because they spent most of their lives in the water? Or because they gave birth to their young in the water, as cetaceans do? (Seals and sea lions come out onto land to give birth.) Or because they do their hunting in the water? [This site gives all the reasons](http://www.athropolis.com/arctic-facts/fact-polar-bear-swim.htm), but they are pretty much arbitrary. Nobody was quite sure, at the time, what fact might make polar bears marine mammals. I think today, basically it’s because the Act says they are. ---
**Author:** ![jjimm](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/ba8739/32.png) [@jjimm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jjimm)\ **Post date:** [December 8, 2011, 7:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-orcas-dolphins/605199/56 "2011-12-08T07:26:27Z")
Thanks for the clarification **shantih**. ---
**Author:** ![shantih](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/f6c823/32.png) [@shantih](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/shantih)\ **Post date:** [December 9, 2011, 7:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-orcas-dolphins/605199/57 "2011-12-09T07:37:24Z")
Immer gern wieder! (Always happy to do so!) ---
**Author:** ![MrDibble](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mrdibble/32/114_2.png) [@MrDibble](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MrDibble)\ **Post date:** [December 9, 2011, 10:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-orcas-dolphins/605199/58 "2011-12-09T10:46:52Z")
I keep reading Steno as Sterno, and am picturing a dangerously intoxicated Flipper… ---
**Author:** ![Senegoid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/senegoid/32/6606_2.png) [@Senegoid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Senegoid)\ **Post date:** [December 11, 2011, 12:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-orcas-dolphins/605199/59 "2011-12-11T12:35:38Z")
> [@MrDibble](#): > > I keep reading Steno as Sterno, and am picturing a dangerously intoxicated Flipper… That would be the Sternidae, the family of sea birds commonly called terns. 😛 ---
**Author:** ![Johnny\_L.A](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johnny_l.a/32/1084_2.png) [@Johnny\_L.A](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Johnny_L.A)\ **Post date:** [December 11, 2011, 4:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-orcas-dolphins/605199/60 "2011-12-11T16:54:01Z")
Sterno-drinking sea birds? Sounds like a tern for the worst. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-orcas-dolphins/605199.md?page=2) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-orcas-dolphins/605199.md?page=4)