One of my favorite tricks for designing alien species/cultures is to take a real animal with an interesting lifecycle and think about what that biology would translate to if they had human intelligence
all cyberpunk stories are like “If you wanna crack open a cybercroissant this nasty, you’re gonna need a real top notch e-driller. i know a guy- Toledo Killswitch- he’s got the frag ordinance you need to grizzle this bocce ball.”