Miqo'te claws: Function or Fashion?

[Iscah]

I was thinking about something similar a while back but coming from the opposite direction - toying with a (non-FFXIV) concept of a sphinx character and just how impractical that combination of human head and cat body would actually be. Cats are built to catch their prey with claws, but use their jaws to actually kill it. A human can't do that, and a human with cat claws isn't going to be able to hunt like a cat, unless they want to scratch their prey to death.

Additionally, cats' claws are only really useful combined with cat anatomy that lets them 'sheathe' their claws and keep them sharp. The claws don't retract into the toes, but the toes naturally sit in a folded position something akin to our fingers folding back beyond our natural stopping point to touch the back of our palm, and the claws only appear when the cat extends its toes out straight. (Compare the toe shape shown on these cat and wolf skeletons. Note that the elbow/knee joints are up closer to the body and the lower 'leg joints' are equivalent to our wrist and ankle.)

Since Miqo'te don't have that rather unsettling idea of hand anatomy, if they had claws they would be unretractable. In everyday usage they would either end up blunted, or have to be maintained very carefully to avoid that - but it would be extemely impractical, and they'd probably end up injuring themselves with their own fingers.

There's no evolutionary advantage for Miqo'te to develop claws instead of nails, any more than the other 'human' races. (Or real human hunter-gatherer tribes, which are a much better analogy for what Miqo'te people would have been doing over time.)

...but don't try to explain why they needed to evolve furry ears in a completely different position to every other race, if they're all supposed to have come from a common ancestor. I've put it in the "too hard, don't even try" basket.

Nails have advantages too - and I think would well outweigh blunted claws. They protect the soft end of our fingers, and help with precise gripping, scraping, and probably all sorts of everyday motions we don't even think about.