Which Animals Have the Longest Claws?

We really dug our claws into this Saturday’s Weird Animal Question of the Week, asked by Judy Eastwood: "What animal has the longest and shortest toenails?”

There isn’t much data on the subject, especially for shorter toenails, but we took a closer look at a few long-clawed animals that would not get a good night’s sleep in a waterbed.

That means their claws are about 22 percent of their body length—probably the longest claw to body ratio of any living animal, Mariella Superina, chair of the International Union for Conservation of Nature's Anteater, Sloth, and Armadillo Specialist Group, says via email. (See "Diggers in the Dark: Discovering Giant Armadillos in Brazil’s Pantanal.")

Native to South America, giant armadillos use their huge claws to dig up prey. They're “definitely not aggressive," but if threatened, they “could probably try to defend themselves with their foreclaws,” Superina says.

Digging It



Armadillos, like anteaters and sloths, belong to the superorder Xenarthra, which includes insect-eating, big-clawed animals from the American tropics, says Don Moore, associate director of Smithsonian's National Zoo in Washington, D.C.

America's Got Talons 



When it comes to birds, the American harpy eagle, which ranges from Central to South America, is a major contender for longest talons—it has four-inch (ten-centimeter) long talons, says Bryan Bedrosian of the Teton Raptor Center.