mammals

[dumb mum]

please help a dumb mum do mammals have to have hair?, if so what about dolphins and whales help quick please.

[Bio_Girl015]

Good question. Yes all mammals have hair. But whales and dolphins had hair as embryos. As adults whales have hair around their mouths and dolphins have hair around their blowholes.Having only a little bit of hair reduces the amount of water resistance allowing these mammals to swim faster. Hope this answers your question.

[Khaiy]

I'm not 100% sure about dolphins, but whales do have hair, just not a thick coat like a lot of mammals. Dolphins might also have some very fine, and possibly vestigial hairs.

EDIT: Blast, beaten to it by Bio_Girl015!

[Bio_Girl015]

Yes Khaiy, I beat you. Haha! Anyways, if you look up dolphins on google it will tell you where they have hair. But I am positive that most of their hair is where their blow hole is. And yes Khaiy is right their hair is extremely fine and almost not visible.

[dumb mum]

Thank you ladies, I have now scored brownie points with my teenage daughter. Yesss!

Dumb mum

[Bio_Girl015]

You're very welcome! I'm glad I could help. Goodluck!
PS: Mums aren't dumb...they are the best.

[kiekyon]

Whales are mammals. They breath air, have hair (calves have hairs around the front of their heads), are warm blooded, and give birth to live offspring that suckle milk from their mothers Mammary Glands, glands that produce milk, which all mammals have. In most mammals, the glands are developed only in mature females. Hormones secreted by the anterior pituitary gland, and the ovaries regulate the development of mammary glands; milk production is under the control of the other pituitary hormones.

Hair is a feature unique to mammals; no other animals on earth have it (even though we sometimes refer to spiders' legs as "hairy," spiders and other non-mammals lack true hair).

Usually, mammals are covered with fur, although the length and coarseness of the hairs varies. Notable exceptions to this rule are whales, dolphins, and porpoises. These mammals are entirely aquatic, spending all their time in water, and they don't have fur because hairs create drag in the water. Olympic swimmers recognize this fact, and they frequently shave their entire bodies to help them swim faster. So Whales really do have hair but it is so thinned out it can't be seen unless examined very close.

[+R@cY]

Hmm, well not every animal that has hair are mammals, like a monotreme.

HA! :-p

[Doc44]

Class: Mammalia

Order: Monotremata = monotremes

Doc44

Hairy question.

[David George]

How about naked mole rats they don't have hair classification can never be stable as many animals evolve in that process they might lose some important charecters[important for their ancestors] hence the best way of clasification should be in the basis of genetics.

[Doc44]

Well the naked mole-rats do have just a little hair around their mouths...so hair is still a good distinguisning characteristic of mammals.

Genetic dichotomous keys would make field zoo and field botany courses interesting.

1. AAGGAGCTTAA sequence present on chromosome 6..........2

1. AAGGAGCTTAA sequence not present on chromosome 6.........52

Doc44

Blair and Blair, "Dichotomous Genetic Key of the Vertebrates of the United States"