If you think about it, fingernails are really gross

My family has horses and a few weeks back I watched the trainer change my horse, Harry's shoes. Like our own fingernails, horses and a similar cartilage on their feet, much thicker of course, but all the same. The shoes are actually nailed into their nails and it doesn't really hurt them. I think nails are really a gross material. Here we have this very much dead component growing. As a active nail biter, I eat my nails. I am trying to break this habit, but its rough. Hence the gross part. Harry doesn't bite his nails, he eats wood though.