Are finger nails residual claws?

Yeah I think so. Vestigial claws.

I said residual because they still have some claw-like functions—like scratching a bitch’s eyes out.

Not always vestigial.

If you put all your fingers and thumb together and flex your wrist like your hand was Lambchop the puppet turning around to talk to you, you can see that tendon in the center of your wrist. That tendon’s purpose was to help us swing from branch to branch. We don’t need it anymore.

Of course. Why would you even ask the question?

They're neither 'residual' or 'vestigial'; they're claws, pure and simple. We moderns generally keep them trimmed and neat. Grown out, they're capable of doing some damage.

My late grandmother (died 1980) had long, red nails that she frequently sank into my arm - so strong, I wouldn't have been surprised if she could use them to drive a slot screw into softwood.

[quote] My late grandmother (died 1980) had long, red nails

They’re too weak to be called actual claws.

Because we’re just sitting around having a conversation, R5. What the fuck.

R7, they were more like this:

Gorillas have fingernails not claws. I think most apes and monkeys have fingernails.

R10, those don't look like dragon claws. Was your grandmother not a dragon?

R10, don’t you live around Fort Worth?

I had to drive through there today— hit it at around 4:00 and I swear to god it took and hour and a half to get on the other side of it, headed toward Abilene. I was on the expressway! It was hell on earth. I made the same trip, same time on this day last year and more or less breezed through.

Is it always that bad now?

[quote] R12: those don't look like dragon claws. Was your grandmother not a dragon?

I don't think so; I don't think she was born in a dragon year. ;)

Hmm, the image at R10 looks to me like press-on nails. But my grandmother's were like that in color and shape.

[quote]R13: don’t you live around Fort Worth?

I live close to the Metroplex.

The traffic depends on the time of day. Were you using I-20, the so-called 'death freeway'?

R14, I WAS!

Glad I didn’t know it at the time. I was frazzled as hell!

Hmm, my grandmother's nails.

The thing about the red nail polish was that, when my grandmother was fourteen, her father, a deacon in a local West Texas Church of Christ, caught her applying the polish from a bottle she'd somehow gotten from town. He called her a whore, took a razor strap and lashed her mercilessly, driving her off the farm, across the brambles to the road. In her flight, she got hung in the barbwire fence, but instead of helping her out of it, he lashed her even more, until at length she got free. She was thenceforth considered disowned from her family (she had ten siblings, I think), and although she never said much about this time of her life, I think that, in order to survive, she became something like what her father had named her.

Ten years or so later, she returned with three children in tow; my mom was the middle one. They were all born in wedlock, from the same man, from whom she was already separated, soon to be divorced. She left the children with her parents for a time, during which her father, deacon of his church, molested my mom. There was a lot of blame there, since my grandmother well knew what sort of a man he was, but left her kids there nonetheless.

Many years later I met my great-grandparents, when I was three or four years old. My great-grandfather had developed diabetes, and had what they called "black leg," making him highly susceptible to blood clots. Having already heard stories of how he'd beaten my mom as a child for sitting on the running board of the truck - so severely that she forgot what she'd been beaten for, and promptly sat back down on it again - I kicked him in the shin. They made me sit outside on the sidewalk for the remainder of the visit.

I don't think finger nails resemble claws but I think hands resemble alligator/croc/dinosaur feet.

That’s Texas for ya…shit hole of all hell holes