I think maybe that their bones would shift slightly giving them a more paw like feature or something to that effect

shift where? Paw-like in what sense? :o

Kind of like when people shift into werewolves how their bones rearrange and such, the same thing would be used here. Their bones in their hands and wrists would shift and make their hands/paws into a usable animal paw/claw so that when need be they are able to walk on them without it hurting or being in an odd position

oh so they'd shapeshift basically. I didn't even consider doing it that way, but maybe I should!

Though hmm maybe it would be pretty goofy looking in their four-legged form. And for one thing if I'm gonna go that far, why not full out let them be able to turn into a feral. Gotta think..

Well I mean if you look at how a dog/cat/whatever how their thighs are pretty close up to their body it think in general it would be the same when they ran they would just have a longer stride do to the fact of their legs being a bit more longer and not as restricted by fur and such

A creature optimised to walk on 2 legs cannot walk good on 4 legs and vice versa.
There might be a mix between the two which can do both reasonably well, but none of them as good as the specialized form.

Pawpads are just hairless pieces of skin that are a thicker since the animals walk on them.
If a paw becomes a hand the strain of permanent walking is gone, so the paw pads would get thinner (over the generations) till you have a hand with simply no fur on the inside and perhaps very flat pads (human hands don't have hair on the inside of the hand either).

Wait are you saying that anthros would not have fur on the inside of their hands?

I figured that there is either pads or fur. So if they don't have pads, there would simply be fur in its place, just as there is all around the pads on an animal paw in real life. But correct me if I'm wrong.

Well, I can't say for sure of course since this is speculation, but I do think the hair on the inside would disappear without pads.

Even if they grew fur on the inside, they would probably loose it gradually as one grew older due to constant use. Think of a soccer field where near the goals the grass vanishes, because the goalie is constantly running over it.

I have read a series of novels involving a felinoid alien race (not C.J. Cherryh's hani race nor Larry Niven's kzin - it was a female author, and I think I recall her being British) where the aliens could move upright or on all fours. The latter was accomplished by the fact that 1) their arms were slightly longer and their legs slightly shorter than a human of the same proportions so that the two pairs of limbs were approximately equal length (human arms are much shorter than legs), and 2) their hands had a unique bone/muscle/tendon arrangement that allowed their fingers to retract the first joint back into the palm while also shifting the palm to a proper quadrapedal position and bracing it there. While feasible, I don't know if I'd call that exceptionally realistic unless all members of their taxonomical family exhibited a similar trait.

Purely off the top of my head and not in any way a definitive answer, the most likely scenario I can think of to explain such a trait developing naturally would be if a species first evolved to be tree-climbing (mainly because the only animals I can think of with grasping paws are all capable of climbing trees) and then something - blight, climate change, a shift in the course of a river, etc. - caused a large-scale die-off of trees within that species' native habitat. If there are a sufficient number of predators on the ground, being able to quickly cross a few acres of open plain to reach the next tree could be a major survival trait. It would likely start with individuals exhibiting something like double-jointedness enabling them to lope along the ground more efficiently than those around them, and as long as that trait was genetic, it could be selected for. Remember, you don't have to be faster than the predator - just faster than the other prey around you. Later generations might stumble into a lucky mutation to further refine that with the bones popping out of joint then locking into a new configuration which, if it improved the chances of surviving long enough to breed, could lead to it becoming the dominant trait for the species.

Knuckle-walking is a bit more likely, but with that method, you have to have arms that are either approximately the same length as their legs (which looks strange enough - go ahead and draw it if you doubt!) or longer than their legs like you see in the great apes. In short, any kind of quadrapedal stance moves the being in question slightly further away from the humanoid side of the equation and closer to the 'animal standing on its hind legs' look. Deer would especially look weird since their hooves are nothing like hands, so without doing the bone shift concept above, any deer anthro would either have really oddly wide fore hooves in quad stance or oddly narrow, two or three-fingered hands (with either two thumbs or one thumb and one small finger) in biped stance. Knuckle-walking would mean their hands would look rather odd what with the hoof actually being the backs of their two main fingers. Ending their thumb(s) in hoof caps would be possible but unlikely as it would reduce the dexterity of the digits. A similar caution would apply to creatures with pads on their hands. I am suddenly reminded that when D&D borrowed the Rakshasa from Hindu myths, they chose to describe them as bestial humanoids, often like tigers, and having their palms on the backs of their hands. This wouldn't be far from that.

All that said, I think that the lovely ladies you have drawn in the past will never be comfortable walking on all fours due to the human-like ratio of arm to leg length. Oh, there are ways you could have bones shift to lengthen one limb and/or shorten another limb, but I'm inclined to think that all such methods would either weaken the creature's bone structure or require extra bone mass (making the creature heavier and therefore slower) to brace these mobile bones. So, if you want to try a very different look for your ladies, feel free to experiment with some of the above notions, but having any of your existing ladies walk on all fours is unlikely without magic, advanced nanotech, cybernetics, or surgery.

I am not willing to change arm length, but have considered the idea of magical mutation. (largely because I am doing it anyway with avians, though I am reconsidering even that) To clarify, I am not looking to make walking-on-all-4's faster than walking on 2 legs. I just don't want my characters to injure themselves. Additionally however I also need to know what to do with hand pads and, if they do have hand pads, where to put them.

Walking on the back of their fists, you say?

Well, the main point of changing arm or leg length is that if you use human proportions for both and there's no method for the length to change when dropping onto all fours, you end up with the girl's butt elevated well above her head unless she bends her knees well past the halfway point. Go ahead and sit on the edge of your chair then hold out your hand as if motioning someone to stop. Now try lifting your leg and pulling your foot back until it's even with your hand. I'm not terribly flexible, so I can't do even that much. Why does this matter? While it's a nicely humiliating posture to be sure, there's the small matter that vertebrae aren't designed to bend back enough for a bipedal girl to comfortably look forwards even if her back is parallel to the ground, so having her tipped forwards at all means she would have an easier time walking backwards than forwards. Magic would nicely solve both the problems of limb-length and could re-shape the neck vertebrae, tendons, and ligaments to make looking forwards easier.

Again, while walking on all fours has an interesting humiliation angle in the dehumanizing of slaves, I can't imagine such a trait being something natural to the species unless it conferred some benefit or at least had in the past. Four-legged movement is naturally faster than two legs (at least if the body is optimized for it), but two-legged movement is naturally more efficient (again if the body is optimized for it) which is why primitive humans made such good hunters - they couldn't outrun most game, but they could keep running longer and eventually the prey would become too exhausted to keep fleeing. If the body is not optimized for a mode of movement, it will be both slower and less efficient than creatures that are optimized to move that way. Magic that rendered a naturally bipedal being capable of moving on all fours but did not optimize them enough to gain any benefit from that posture sounds distinctly like a curse since that would rather limit one when it comes to carrying or manipulating things.

I had intended to mention paw pads but apparently never explicitly did. Sorry about that. Anyway, similar to what Sen-en said, they would need something special to protect whatever part of their hand they walked on. If they walked on the flat of their hands, they would need either paw pads or thicker fur like rabbits have. Since hooves are made out of the same material as fingernails, namely keratin, it really wouldn't be very practical to have something that smooth on the gripping surface of your hand - for instance, such a species would have difficulty with writing implements unless magic caused the keratin to only be present in quad-mode.

Knuckle-walking could be done one of two ways - either by making a fist and walking on the backs of the first joint of their hands or by bending only the second and third knuckle and supporting themselves on the second joint of their fingers. That latter method however comes with a caveat - if the first joints of all fingers are of human proportions rather than the same length, the middle finger will protrude out in front of the index and ring finger while the little finger (if present) will barely touch the ground. Either form of knuckle-walking will need something - extra thick fur, paw pads, keratin, or just heavily callused skin like gorillas have - to protect the backs of the fingers.

There is one thing to be considered as well - any species which spends a fair amount of time supporting even part of its body weight on its arms is going to have very good upper body strength. This is why chimps can rather easily dislocate a human's arm despite weighing significantly less than them. The only way I can imagine this not being the case is if magic is used to move some muscle mass from the legs to the arms (and possibly some to the back since many quadrupeds flex their entire torso when running) as part of the change to quadruped and then shifting the extra muscle tissue back into the legs when standing upright. This would also keep the species from being more than a little bit faster in four legged form since the muscle mass isn't changing - it's merely re-arranging. Given a surface on which they get good traction, the quadruped stance would be better at turning corners while running, but polished marble floors are going to favor anyone in rubber-soled shoes.

Personally, I rather like the idea of anthros being marginally faster when shifting to quadruped but also having the drawback of burning through their body's reserves quicker. Oh, and lets not forget that being covered with fur is great for when it's cold but not so good for prolonged running if its even a comfortable 70 degrees Fahrenheit outside. Cheetahs may be the fastest land mammal on Earth, but even with enlarged nasal passages, they can only maintain their top speed for a maximum of three minutes and then have to rest for half an hour or more. I can easily imagine female slaves stuck in quadruped stance (through magic or perhaps some special restraint) being hunted for sport by people using bolas, lassos, nets, blow guns with non-lethal doses of curare, and tranquilizer guns. Some might even opt to simply run down their 'prey' then wrestle the exhausted girl to the ground. Sounds fun to me!

I think I'm good with using a fluctuating combination of bent knees and elevated butt. I overlooked the issue of looking forward however. But maybe it can be managed.

They don't have to walk on all fours all the time, just sometimes, and for me the practical benefits only have to be minor or situational. (such as stealth. In the wild especially standing may be a dangerous pose since it makes them visible to predators and prey alike?) At first this was just an excuse to be able to have anthros be coerced or cowed into a quadruped position, or for younglings to do it on their own since it's cute.

I could look at pads in two ways a) putting pads wherever they correlate to real animals, regardless of their relevance on an anthro 2 legged creature, or b) Putting pads wherever the anthro could best use them. (though option B could also mean not having pads at all)

Pads could go on the base of the palm and the fingertips. If they walk on their fists, the palm pads would still be used, so it works toward both reasoning A and reasoning B. Having it on their fingertips would largely be reasoning A but maybe reasoning B as well.

If they will need upper-body strength, that might be ok, but it doesn't need to be done by literally moving muscle tissue up and down their entire body. What if their upper body muscles (or- more elegantly- all their muscles) are simply stronger than human's, whether explained by natural or psuedo-supernatural reasons.

I had a thought once of does being hunted for sport, but wasn't sure how that would work exactly. (there are a number of complications I ran into such as ensuring the prey's safety, ensuring they don't escape, creating incentive for them to run at all if they're just going to get caught, all while still somehow having enough suspense to be able to call it a hunt) But I never thought of the idea in general of being magically forced to remain in quadruped stance. That is so awesome.

*shrugs* Like I said, if dropping to all fours involves a magical shift, the neck could certainly be adjusted enough to make it work, but even with bent legs and leaving a slightly elevated rump, I still suspect you'll find you have to adjust arm or leg length when the girls shift to make it look like an even halfway natural mode of movement. Humanoid legs are surprisingly long.

Also, you won't get much stealth out of a four legged stance if it's so incredibly awkward that you make more noise moving that way than a skilled woodsman on two feet. The main ways that being quadrupedal helps stealth are by lowering the creature's profile and distributing the weight across a greater surface area thus reducing the likelihood of breaking twigs and crunching leaves when you move. Predatory species will be unable to use their best stealth posture, namely slinking along with their bellies just above the ground. Many prey species like deer and rabbits only rely on stealth when they are young and instead rely on speed and maneuverability when they're older.

I think I understand what you're going for, and frankly the most likely scenario that pops into my mind would be that someone used magic to 'uplift' (borrowing a term from David Brin) certain animals to sentience but either through a limitation of the process used or deliberate design, the now sentient and bi-pedal animals retained the ability to return to a four legged stance that crudely mimicked their pre-uplift state. Perhaps it was intentional, the original process being used on predators to make a more versatile covert ops soldier and later mages merely applied the same process to other animals with the intention of making their own slaves. Or perhaps it was intentionally done as a way to remind the slaves that even if they could stand on two legs, they could never be human. Regardless, I imagine this latter usage is what became the norm with bindings specially developed to hold a slave in her quad stance to humiliate her. After all, it's one thing to drop to all fours to be stealthy, out of submission, or as childish behavior, but it's another thing entirely to be unable to stand up at all. Just imagine someone supergluing a teenage girl's thumb in her mouth so it looked like she was sucking on her thumb.

My talk about pads in odd places was to explain how it could be done in a realistic manner and demonstrate why most people go with some form of magical transformation or assume a degree of finger flexibility not found in most creatures' digits - aesthetically, more realistic handlings tend to fail badly. Personally I think paw pads on hands and feet (or hooved feet on appropriate species) look cute and bring out the beauty of the original animal, so I'm voting for them to be present in the places where they'd be on a non-anthro. Again, magic opens a lot of doors so that aesthetics don't have to be sacrificed for functionality.

The idea of magically moving muscle tissue was purely to keep the girls close to human strength. Obviously if the original purpose for the uplift was to create soldiers, this would not have been an objective, so yes, you'd end up with beings stronger than humans. If they were intended as slaves from the start, making them stronger wouldn't make as much sense as moving muscles around to keep them closer to human strength and thereby easier to control. Of course, if there was some other reliable means of keeping the slaves in check* then a strong slave can indeed be more useful. It's all a matter of deciding on the premise behind these creatures.

Heh...thank you! I'm glad I could give you some naughty ideas for your ladies. Oh, but you don't have to limit it to just does. After all, nothing says 'old world charm' like a good fox hunt, right? For that matter, hunting rabbits isn't just for Looney Toons characters. For a more western feel, how about herds of free ranging mares that need to be herded, roped, branded, and broken? People hunt and mount wild predators, but how much more satisfying would it be to hunt, capture, and tame an anthro-wolf bitch, puma, leopardess, tigress, or the like then show her off to guests? Just some questions to help stir your creative juices.
(^.^)

*For instance one or more control words might be magically worked into them that could render them compliant, inflict pain, or simply hold them in place. If you ever played Bioshock, I'd be surprised if you never imagined a female put in the same predicament as the player's character. Just imagine: 'Would you kindly crush your clit in these pliers?' 'Would you kindly use this piercing gun on your own nipples and genitals?' 'Would you kindly use your piercings to hitch yourself to my carriage?'

The human-strength issue is a paradox I encountered. It's easier for humans to keep slaves under wraps if they are weaker than them, but at the same time, being weak diminishes the point in using them as slaves to begin with. (This mainly applies to horses, which need to be able to do horse-like tasks.)

I also wanted to keep horsefolk mostly the same size as their human equivalents, which means to be stronger they have to be a combination of having naturally musclemen (without having to work out as much as humans, they just grow up that way) and/or be marginally stronger than humans anyway. (Though they should at least look the part somewhat.) For horses this mainly applies to leg strength, so that kind of solves itself since muscly and/or rigid legs is more horse-like anyway and it makes sense that they would be stronger than human legs.

Previous I have brainstormed what would keep the slaves in control, one method is to use a lot of physical bondage (so they can't escape or attack their owners) and apply heavy, zero tolerance punishments for any misbehavior. Another fact I considered is that their public humiliation doubles as a way to defeat their motivations. They can never really win back their personal or societal dignity. I never really considered magic as a bondage device for the horse setting, but maybe I would now that I have the idea.

I like your hunting ideas. I only considered hunting with does, but all sorts of species work I now realize. In fact, the various more old-fashioned settings for other species (since my doe character lives in a modern setting) would much better facilitate that kind of hunting as an accepted practice.

I only played the XBL demo of Bioshock, I never knew the player-character was in a situation like that.

Anyway there additional questions maybe you can help with (since you're great):
- Should deer have pads on their hands?
- I was thinking fingernails for deer/equine, claws for everything else. Does that sound right?
- Are claws retractable? Should they be retractable on an anthro? (and is there anything I should know about the physiology behind retractable claws, being that I know nothing about them, it might as well be something I saw in a cartoon rather than based in real life)
- A new thing I realized, does claws on a human hand make anatomical sense to begin with? (Then again, ideally the hand would not be entirely human to begin with)
- This: [ Commission: Notveryathletic Tempest Beta - by SOLIDASP http://www.furaffinity.net/view/4929090 ] That looks like a cross between claws and fingernails. (at worst, fingernails shaped like claws) Is that a good compromise!

Well, slaves are plenty useful at human-normal or even weaker than human strength - you just need more of them and possibly some simple tools for them to accomplish their tasks. Dogs aren't as strong as horses, but enough of them do a good job pulling a sled. Besides, strength is mainly beneficial for manual labor - pleasure slaves don't have to be strong unless they entertain through gymnastic feats e.g. what the better pole dancers can do, and that's only if the species is human-mass or greater. The lighter the species, the weaker it can be and still perform. I'm not trying to discourage you from having strong horses - just throwing out some alternates.

While it would be possible to have strong slaves without magic, there are some risks. No matter how thorough, conditioning is never 100% servile for 100% of the slaves its used on. Bindings can fail or be taken off at the wrong time. Humiliation only works if the situation they are enduring isn't worse than living in shame. I think a mix of all of the above methods - conditioning, bindings, humiliation, and zero-tolerance punishments would be most effective, although adding even a small carrot to balance out the huge stick can make effective conditioning work even better. If a situation isn't completely awful and has even brief bright points, people can rationalize enduring some of the worst things for fear that trying to change the situation will make it worse, especially if past experience has shown that it can indeed get much worse! That would be even more important with the stronger slaves - their rewards should be tangible but their punishments should be just that extra bit more extreme than what pleasure slaves endure.

*grins* Again, I'm glad to inspire an artist whose works have brought me much enjoyment to view. I eagerly look forwards to whatever pictures my hunting suggestions may spawn.

Hands on hoofed mammals are always a tricky subject. I've seen artists draw deer with fingers that appear to be capped by hooves and it looks nice, but the issue of poor grip seems to be handwaved. Fur on the gripping surface of fingers could also pose problems for gripping slick objects which is one of the non-aesthetic reasons I don't complain about rabbits with paw pads. The fact is, skin simply has a higher coefficient of friction than keratin be it in the form of hooves, nails, or hair. If the deer were naturally evolved or if they were created to be labor slaves, paw pads with the black hooves becoming blunt fingernails seems a likely change. If they were created to be pleasure slaves, it would make more sense to leave them without pads, and while they probably would also have their hooves become fingernails for aesthetic reasons, I can easily imagine magically increasing the number of nerve endings where the nail is rooted to discourage scratching. If they came about by magical accident, the sky is the limit.

Technically, cats have protractable claws meaning that at rest, the claws are sheathed within the skin but the cat can choose to flex special muscles in their paws to extend them. Retractable claws would be claws that are out when at rest but which could be pulled back if desired. As far as I'm aware, no species has truly retractable claws though cats are often labeled that way because most people don't care about the fiddly little difference. Most cat paws are also designed so that pressure applied to the pad causes the claw to extend. The fishing cat and the cheetah are the only members of Family Felidae that do not have claws which can fully retract. In the case of the cheetah, this is a necessity because at high speeds their paws don't hit the ground long enough for claws to fully protract, so they wouldn't be able to turn tight enough to keep up with the extremely nimble gazelles and similar prey. Instead their claws stay out all the time, much like a dog's claws.

Claws and fingernails are both made of keratin, so the difference is largely academic. Get a human with long enough fingernails and they might as well be claws. That said, what most people think of when they talk about claws mainly involves the keratin being grown out in a different shape. There is the matter of that small bit of flesh with blood vessels in it that is analoguous to the quick of your finger but actually extends out from the digit and part way into the claw itself, but otherwise the structures are quite similar and the latter wouldn't be overly bizarre on a humanoid hand. The picture you linked looks to be a wolf anthro with fingernails grown in the outline of claws, or possibly as you said a halfway point between the two. Regardless, I don't doubt that they would serve the same vicious purpose as claws. As far as I'm aware, all primates technically have human-style nails, but many have them sharp enough to claw you rather thoroughly, so again, the difference isn't going to matter to you once you're bleeding.

In short, draw whichever fits for how you envision the species being created. More natural methods would probably stick closer to the base creature. Anthros created as soldiers or guards would also be more likely to have claws if present in the base creature while pleasure slaves would be more likely to have fingernails for both aesthetics and to discourage mischief, though if the magic that created them also kept their claws blunt, they might still be present. Labor slaves would definitely not be left with usable claws - even with the threat of severe punishments, always being semi-armed and dangerous would be too much temptation to strike out, especially if they were strong slaves.

I hope all that helps!

It does help, thanks.

The slaves could be weaker than humans, but it does not make sense for horses to be weaker. (since they're horses) Also, weaker slaves would mean more horses to pull a carriage, which would be more of a hassle to draw, and may also require more complex bindings, be more difficult to steer, and other factors. This whole strength issue mainly just applies to horses, maybe even ONLY horses and bovines. For instance my kitsune race I intuit as being delicate compared to humans, there some kitsune are exceptions. And pretty much no species I recall will be tasked to do manual labor to the extent of horses.

One of the things about horses is that it's a societal takeover. In a way they can't escape because even if they do they will just be caught again. Good point about the carrot thing. I think I was doing something like that too but on second thought the carrot was simply them growing to enjoy their role. (due to factors such as the sexuality of it, and of course being provided with food/water) Also again the fact that their minds are wired that way due to being horses - in a profound sense, they WANT to be slaves, they want to be (and/or be used as) horses, as much as they outwardly deny it.

"which is one of the non-aesthetic reasons I don't complain about rabbits with paw pads." Remind me again (since I think you once mentioned this before) what's wrong with rabbits having pads. If I remember correctly, they do have pads, but they are covered in fur. (though if that's the case, I might as well just pretend they don't have pads, as the visual end result will be the same.) Though if having padless fingertips presents a problem then I suppose everyone should have padded fingertips now, including rabbits, probably deer, and maybe even horses. Either that or they might not have fur at all on the inside of their hands. (though I don't like the idea. Except maybe for horses/equines/bovines)

Okay, so protractable claws -only- appear on felines. That certainly simplifies things!

I imagined that the claws are not only a different shape than fingernails, but also where they grow out from. Fingernails are wedged at the top surface of the finger, whereas when I think of claws, they grow out from the center of the fingertip. Is this correct?

You mention often the premise of how the anthros in question came to exist in the first place. In my case they are not manmade, but not from evolution either. And they have no known preconceived purpose. (though humans may insist that they do (or fabricate one) as was the case with horses) Though I had an idea for one or more stories involving the Anunnaki capturing girls, in which they explain that they created them (humans) as their subservients. In that case, they probably created anthros too, and for similar reasons.

I see where you're coming from on the horses. I mean, if magic were involved, they could be made weaker, but then why use horses at all? And yeah, with slaves meant for heavy labor, as long as they don't have a noticeably higher than normal metabolism, it's more economical to feed, house, and clothe (or at least dress in bondage gear) one strong slave than two or three weaker slaves.

If you have any bears or large cats (lions, tigers, leopards, etc.), I would expect them to also be in this category, though as noted, they would more likely be guards or overseers - still slaves but elevated slightly above other slaves with greater responsibilities, greater rewards for good service, but also much greater punishments for poor service or disobedience. Any slave you trust with a weapon has to be kept carefully in line. I suspect a slave status lower than all the labor slaves and pleasure slaves exists purely for the purpose of demoting disobedient guard slaves (probably with a ritual declawing of the offender). Considering that guards would carry out many punishments for other slaves, any guard reduced in status to where other slaves can do with them as they please...

Your societal takeover would work for most, but there's always someone who will start a rumor of a secret refuge somewhere that lucky slaves can escape to where they can live like real people. What do you do about it? You make sure you start the rumor so you have some control over it, steering the majority of the escapees towards a point where they can be recaptured and either reeducated or made examples.

Horses have a herd mentality and dogs have a pack mentality - this is why these animals domesticated so easily and serve men so readily. If you can prove you are more dominant than them, they will accept you as the alpha of their herd/pack and generally follow your lead, so yes, you weren't incorrect about that aspect. Still, there are always some who will want to test their dominance against yours more than once. Having even a little carrot to balance out the huge stick helps reduce the frequency of having to use the stick. That is a good thing since a slave that spends half her time recovering from punishment isn't providing her full value to you.

Rabbits don't have paw pads in the sense that other animals do i.e. a noticeable amount of extra flesh to cushion the bones of their feet. Instead they have closer to human amounts of flesh on the bottoms of their paws but these are covered with a thick layer of fur. That said, the bare paw pads look cute and are functional, so that's seems like pure win to me, though my own snowshoe hare Honey does not have bare pads. Seriously though, if you ran barefoot on snow, you would want a layer of fur protecting your feet too!

So far as I am aware, there are no creatures other than felines with protractable claws but the animal kingdom has some oddities, so I can't say for certain that there aren't a few other species.

I believe you are mostly correct about the placement of their point of growth, though I would say they grow out of the top center as opposed to dead center of the digit. Dead center is where the tip of the bone would be, and I'm fairly certain that cat claws fit into a sheath of skin just over top of the bone.

I also did a little more investigating and found out that claws differ in one other interesting way - claws have two main layers, the unguis and subunguis. If I understand correctly, the former is the hard outer layer where the keratin fibers grow in layers which are approximately perpendicular to direction of growth, but not all of the layers grow at the same angle which would give the unguis its strength. The subunguis is a softer layer below it where the keratin fibers grow parallel to the direction of growth. Primate finger and toenails lack the subunguis except in a few species suck as lemurs, tarsiers, and the aye-aye who have claws that are that halfway point between a nail and a claw we discussed - they are used mainly for grooming.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toilet-claw

Hmmm...well, since evolution is the process of a series of genetically transmittable mutations out of which those which reduce the likelihood of reproduction are usually weeded out eventually, and those which increase the likelihood of reproduction will tend to spread, I can only see two main possibilities. Either the change was done by an entity other than man, or the change was something fairly drastic which equally affected all members of what became the new species and too little time has passed since then for anything more than a superficial degree of evolutionary change.

As happened with slavery in America, I wouldn't be surprised if the more pro-slavery humans in your world found passages in whatever holy texts they have and use them to justify their superiority over the anthros. Pulling from the Bible, right off the top of my head I can give you a good example: And God blessed them, and God said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth. - Genesis 1:28 from the King James version. No, I don't have it memorized, but I knew the general verbiage and was able to google it easily. It's a good example of a passage that was never meant to suggest enslaving animals* but someone could certainly twist it to mean slavery.

Heh, I can only imagine what would happen to man's great hubris if they ever found out they were created by anything less than a deity. Indeed, I can't help but think that at least one reaction would be to violently suppress the truth for fear that it would upset the status quo of them as slave owners and the anthros as slaves. There's definitely some fodder for interesting stories there!

*The verbiage here was likely chosen to hark back to the nature of the feudal lord. In feudalism, a lord did reign over his vassals and collected taxes from them, but in turn he was expected to protect them from bandits and hostile armies. It was actually kind of like a medieval protection racket. Anyway, the passage is essentially saying, You can use the animals for your benefit, but you're also responsible for what happens to them. Yeah, we've kinda screwed up a few times...poor dodo, passenger pigeon, thylacine, etc....