#alien design

My current character I'm playing as in a custom TTRPG with friends :3

But it's the fact that how could you tell that they are intelligent the same way humans are? Many traits such as recognising and remembering faces, problem solving, playing, object permanence, learning, is something that can be seen in animals like crows, badgers, and more, and there isn't actually a perfect definition of "intelligent being" to define ourselves from other living things

But one certain thing that no one has except for us is the way we manipulate the nature around us to accommodate our needs (cities for example) or how we made tools to compensate for what we don't have (vehicles for speed, weapons for strength) i mean if crows had hands i am pretty sure they would use them

And that's the thing! I can't just put hands on a jellyfish! But i think i have a solution

4 tentacle look-a-like structures that extend from under the bell a layer before the stinging tentacles, they flex by water flowing inside them*, with those they are able to hold things and then make things, build structures like home where they protect themselves from predators, i am imagining like a kindergarden/nursery for babies to sprout and develop until they can go out; planting poisonous algae like a barrier to ward off predators from communities; making traps for their food to swim into instead of using only their tentacles

Perhaps there aren't many options since it's in the ocean and they are giants but i will see if i come up with more

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* reference on what i mean

"The salp moves by contracting its gelatinous body in order to pump water through it; it is one of the most efficient examples of jet propulsion in the animal kingdom."

"Although salps appear similar to jellyfish because of their simple body form and planktonic behavior, they are chordates: animals with dorsal nerve cords,[11] related to vertebrates (animals with backbones)."

Source: Wikipedia

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Speculative anatomy for my Captainsona's species. I wanted to focus on how his freaky mouth worked cuz it was giving me a lot of troubles during his initial designing.

There's like twice as many places in the skull for mandible and temporal muscles to go through plus a sagittal crest that animals with intense bites have, so he has insane biting power. He doesn't have any molars or anything, just flat teeth and insizors so he's evolved to be a carnivore specifically, but they don't have to strictly eat that way. Things like vegetables and higher fiber foods that harder to digest must be torn into tiny pieces, or blended up if he wants to have them tho since he doesn't have molars to grind stuff.