Different in DNS resolution between PING and NSLOOKUP (on Windows)?

I'm trying to better understand the fundamental difference between how nslookup and ping get DNS resolution.

For example, in some oddball situations, nslookup for a specific domain or subdomain will completely timeout (domain won't resolve at all).  However, for that same domain or subdomain, if I try to ping it instead,  it will show an IP address for that hostname.

So somehow ping can resolve the IP address, and nslookup can't.
Don't both commands use the default DNS servers configured on the specific machine?


Here's an example below:


(the "Can't find server name for address xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx" error is just because we don't' have rDNS for our nameserver IP and not related to the issue)


NSLOOKUP:

C:\>nslookup api-aa-3t.paypal.com
*** Can't find server name for address xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx: Non-existent domain
Server:  UnKnown
Address:  xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx

DNS request timed out.
    timeout was 2 seconds.
*** Request to UnKnown timed-out


PING:

C:\>ping api-aa-3t.paypal.com

Pinging api-aa-3t.paypal.com [173.0.88.68] with 32 bytes of data:



Where is ping getting the IP resolution from if nslookup can't resolve the same hostname?


Thanks