The longest nails in the world: a new Guinness record

A man from India got into the Guinness Book of Records, without doing, in fact, nothing at all. He did not eat a lot of hot dogs, did not jump from the roof of the building. All he did was give up basic hygiene and grow fingernails on an arm for an incredibly long time.

New record

Sridhar Chillal did not cut his nails for 62 years. The last time he used a manicure scissors in 1952. As a result, on the left hand, huge nails twist into intricate spirals, the length of which is about nine meters. Such nails, naturally, caused a lot of questions: how did the man eat all this time or answer phone calls? In general, how is this possible? Here are the three most pressing issues of the public concerning nails.

Why do they have people?

Of course, the nails look pretty when they are trimmed, the process of opening a can of soda is much easier - but these are not all the reasons why people have nails growing. And what is the reason? This is because people are primates. Unlike most mammals equipped with claws to be able to dig and climb, people and other primates have on their hands such fingers that it would be convenient to take tools and other objects. But the nails still remain a kind of riddle. Scientists still can not figure out whether the nails are the usual evolutionary remnant from the lost claws - or did they help the primates to use their fingers more efficiently? The latter option, most likely, is the closest to the truth. Primates already had nails even 55 million years ago - it was from this period that the oldest nail was found. Primates, most likely, used nails to better cling to the trees they moved around.

How do they grow?

This question refers to the category such as "how the paste is squeezed out of the tube?" - they are household, but they are incredibly mysterious. The newly formed cells at the base of the nail push out the old cells to the surface, during which they stretch and align. The base of the nail is under the skin just above the first joint of the finger. Most of the process of nail growth is exactly there, so you can not see it. Once the cells are pushed out to the surface, they lose their nuclei and harden, turning into what you know as the "fingernail." When the nail only appears on the surface, it is also provided with special cells that provide it with greater thickness and strength. There is also a site behind the cuticle, which supplies the nail with other cells - they give it a well-known shine.

How much longer can they be?

The Guinness Record, established by Chillal, clearly demonstrates that the legs can grow to a very long length. The longest nail Chillala - on the thumb, it is two meters in length, while it ends, folding into a coil. Naturally, because of these nails a man gets a lot of unnecessary worries, his life becomes much more complicated. At night, he wakes up every half hour to move his left hand with his fingernails lying on the other side of the bed. He had problems with employment, because employers told him that he was not well-groomed, and he could hardly get through the city to find his wife - the only person who was not afraid of him. Of course, most people shear their nails on a regular basis and do not allow them to become long, and even those who want to grow their nails for beauty, notice that they grow incredibly slowly. In addition, even the nails on one hand do not grow at the same speed. Proof of this are the same nails Chillala. The nail on the middle finger is in most cases the fastest growing, while the fingernails on the thumb and little finger are the slowest.