I don’t do much creature design. Still trying to iron out various tweaks in their design that I keep changing. Are you immediately wanting to pet any, or what would need to change for that to happen? My main goal is mushroom-cuttlefish vibes in a friendshape.
I also want to define their biology a bit more, but I don’t have much technical knowledge about that stuff. Generally, I imagine their heads are mostly lungs and they tweet like a bird and parrot some sounds. They can hold a note for a painfully long time. They can fit their head and arms into really small spaces as there is little bone in there. And they can temporarily make their heads textured/coloured to look like other things to a degree. They have 5 face tendrils, the centre is the strongest for grappling/holding, the off-centre two are a bit weaker and thinner, used for manipulating, and there are two sensitive ones almost always tucked back and away, used for feeling/sensing details of things they pick up. They often sit/stand on their hind legs like meerkats and prairie dogs because their arms are super weak and their centre of mass is weirdly distributed.
“Lots of variation and anatomical inconsistency” could totally be one of their features as a species.
Maybe some can stand on their rear legs, but others can’t. Maybe some can curl themselves into a ball, but others can’t. Maybe their face tendrils can expand and contract in ways that seem impossible. Maybe their body produces bone as needed, then reabsorbs it later, so sometimes they can fit into small spaces but other times they can’t.
That’s the fun thing about alien biology: it’s alien. It doesn’t need to follow the same rules as animals here on Earth. Just come up with a reason that sounds like it makes logical sense, whether or not an Earth animal could plausibly do it.
True, I should make like a pokedex thing with all the little quirks one can find between the different species of gegecker. Would probably ensure I’ll never get bored of drawing them too!