So, I saw @arcange's discussion about the way to approach this, and I saw other observations lying around. I decided to make a synthesis of the information here and also add a bit to my point of view. But it came out super long, so I made it into a post.
I think there are some valid points everywhere. This could be talked about very lengthily as it's a really fun topic.
As I said in the post, it'd be funny to see what people create. We could even go for space whale bees and create a crazy lore, but it would all depend on people's creativity.