• Question: What are fingernails?

    Asked by anon-244767 on 30 Apr 2020.
    • Photo: Anabel Martinez Lyons

      Anabel Martinez Lyons answered on 30 Apr 2020: last edited 1 May 2020 9:48 am

      Fingernails (and toenails) are made mostly of keratin, a hard protein that is also found in your skin and hair. Nails start growing under your skin and as new nail cells grow, the older cells are pushed out, compacted and take on the flattened, hardened form of a fingernail. The part you can see actually consists of dead cells. That’s why it doesn’t hurt to cut your nails! Underneath your nails though is a network of tiny blood vessels, which supply our alive nail cells (under our cuticles) with the nutrients they need to keep growing.

    • Photo: Liane Hobson

      Liane Hobson answered on 30 Apr 2020:

      Anabel has given you a really great answer. I just want to add that keratin is the stuff that rhino horns, animal hooves and hair is made of too. I always think it’s cool that your finger nails are made of the same stuff as those things!

    • Photo: Nina Rzechorzek

      Nina Rzechorzek answered on 30 Apr 2020:

      Hi cbond, just to add that horses’ hooves are essentially similar to our finger nails and so horses are effectively walking on their tip toes! On each front leg, horses are walking on the equivalent to our middle finger (in evolutionary anatomy terms).

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