Why do humans have fingernails?
Actually, neither of the above answers are really correct. The reason humans have fingernails is simply because we’re still primates. Fingernails in humans don’t really serve a major current purpose (The idea that it protects the thin skin underneath them makes no sense, since that implies we specifically evolved them for that reason, but there would be no reason to us to even have developed skin of that kind unless we needed to have fingernails in the first place). But in primates, fingernails are believed to be modified forms of the claws common to lower mammals. Many lower mammals use claws for grabbing, climbing, digging, etc., but since full fledges claws would actually have been more inhibitory to locomotion in primates, they became modified over time. That modification continued as primates evolved into humans into the fingernails we have today. The main reason why we haven’t lost them entirely is simply that there is no selection pressure to do so, i.e. there’s no strong advant
