They seem like one more bodily detail to tend to without much benefit, and sometimes more detriment (breaking a nail or scratching oneself up, ouch!).
Have you ever tried to scratch your balls with the tip of a hot dog?
It helps with touching, percieving surfaces better if there is a hard flat support behind.
I recall reading something about how they give you more tactile sensation on the part opposite and let you expert more pressure but it was a little while ago, might be hearsay.
Every other mammal has finger/toenails, most of them make very good use of it, others not that much (e.g. elephant toenails look pretty useless). Organisms don’t necessarily keep inherited traits because they’re useful, but because they’re not very detrimental.
as a person with burned fingers and having lost two nails:
you absolutely need:
the feeling in your fingertips and nails
if you want to pick up or manipulate finicky things.
i cant pick up coins with my left hand, when i am at the supermarked check out.
i lost the nail at the thumb, the thumb is very important for digit function
Because fingernails (or early versions of it) helped our cladistic ancestors survive hundreds of millions of years ago, maybe more. Maybe it helped them find food or protect themselves, or some other reason that isn’t so intuitive. Certainly they helped us (as humans) to survive, but the reason we have fingernails right now is just a happy accident.
Many people in this thread or conflating what we use them for today, right now, as reasons why we have them, which isn’t exactly right. Certainly they are multifunctional, especially in a modern context, but that is not the reason why we have them. All these reasons posted in this thread remind me of Psychological Evolutionists that only use logic and intuition to find reasons to why we do things the way we do, but in reality it often just happens to be that way. There is no reason for evolution other then happenstance and happy accidents.
tl;dr - We didn’t evolve fingernails to pick up dropped coins, our cladistic ancestors evolved them (likely many hundreds of millions of years ago) for some reason that I don’t know. Maybe to dig things up or defence. Who knows. Any way we use them today is likely just a bonus.
P.S. I don’t like using evolved as a verb, as if it was a conscious undertaking. It arguably isn’t, not really.
Nosepickers and ass scratchers must have an evolutionary advantage.
Same reasons monkeys have them; it helps with grabbing on to branches. The stiffness of the nail results in an increased grip strength, because the forces are blocked.
You ever get a head scratch from someone with nice long fingernails? 🤤
