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Asked by to Thon, James on 24 Jun 2014. This question was also asked by .
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James Bell answered on 24 Jun 2014:
Some whales have bits of hair, often on their chins, leftover from when they were land mammals but since they spend all their time in water, they’ve gradually lost it. Some whales give birth to hairy babies, but the babies quickly lose the hair as they grow up.
Baleen whales (mysticetes) do have something like hair on their baleen plates in their mouths. These are used as a massive sieve to filter out animals like tiny shrimp from the sea to eat but since they serve a very different function to body hair, they can’t really be considered the same
Some marine mammals have hair (like seals, walruses, sea otters and sea lions) but these are ones that come onto land and dry out fairly often. Fur/ hair is a pretty good insulator (because it traps lots of air next the animal’s body) but it needs to be allowed to dry out sometimes.
Whales insulate themselves with thick layers of blubber under their skin.
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Anthony Caravaggi answered on 24 Jun 2014:
Possibly the simplest answer is that whales are mammals, and all mammals have hair, at least at some point in their lives. Whales evolved from mammals which lived on land, millions of years ago. While they have lost most of their body, fur, some does still remain. For example, while adult dolphins are hairless, newly born dolphins have fine hairs on their snout which helps them with location, much like a cat’s whiskers. Dolphins are, of course, closely related to whales.
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princessphoebe commented on :
yesw they do lol !! 🙂