I say combine all of them.
The cute yet highly venomous and gigantic sky-dwelling lynx-gila monster-manta-squids.
Each individual would be composed of individual "colonies" working together in unison, kinda like Go-Lion a.k.a. Voltron.
Living on a terrestrial planet with an extremely thick atmosphere, they spend their entire lives in the skies, existing primarily on a diet of balloon plants, sky algae and giant tree-like land anemones. The latter prey item is actually capable of fighting back by swatting them with its huge tentacles. To circumvent this, they hunt in large groups which attack the prey from all directions and using their venom which is very effective at immobilizing the prey.
Once civilization came around, they began to construct mobile homes made out of balloon plants and twine. Whenever they settled on new land, they anchored their homes to the ground using tree trunks and other assorted weights.
Further into the future, they discovered farming and began to construct permanent homes based on the same system as before, but on a larger scale and employing heavier anchorage.
Eventually, inter-group conflicts began to arise, necessitating the creation of an organized system of combat. Thus, martial arts was born.
Despite the somewhat unusual written descriptions of their appearance, they are actually quite cute once you actually see them.
Yeah, that should about do it.
Poll