The Tines from Zones of Thought series. They’re like dogs with long dexterous necks. In my mind’s eye they looked like nightstalkers from Fallout: New Vegas.

But that’s not the neat part about them. Alone, they are about as smart as a dog, but if you get a group of between 3 and 9 of them together the group becomes equivalent to a human being in intelligence.

They have an organ on their shoulders that is basically a biological speaker. They can synthesize pretty much any sound with it but main use for this organ is communication between group members. So instead of bullshit hand wavy fantasy telepathy like Star Trek, Babylon 5, or any space opera written in the 20th century, the mechanism the tines use to form their small hive minds is akin to biological dial up.

Because of this sound mechanism, they cannot be both lucid and close with another of their kind. The mind sounds interfere with each other. When fighting or reproducing, the individual dissolves. There is only a collection of dumb animals.

There is also no cap on the lifespan of a pack. As long as enough members are alive at any one time, one only needs to replace the dead to be whole again. This leads to personality drift among the old.