Tnuctip
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The Tnuctipun are a fictional alien species in Larry Niven's Known Space series.
Tnuctip are small, arboreal pack predators. Average length was about 3-4 feet. Their heads were long and lean, and their eyes opened side to side. They are highly social and extremely intelligent (average IQ estimated around 130-140). As befits their carnivorous nature, they were also very ruthless, aggressive and cunning. Their word for "alien" most closely translates to "food that talks". Two billion years before humans evolved, the galaxy was ruled by the Thrintun, who telepathically enslaved other species, including the Tnuctipun.
The Tnuctipun invented most of the technologies from that era, including Stage Trees (whose structure incorporates a rocket engine), Sunflowers (flowers with integral parabolic mirrors that can focus sunlight to deadly effect), and stasis fields (a time dilation device). They were also known to have direct conversion of mass to energy and a telepathy shield (these two technologies were lost by the time of most Niven stories). In order to think creatively, the Thrintun allowed the Tnuctipun some freedom. The Tnuctipun used that freedom to stage a rebellion against their masters, the culmination of a carefully thought out, centuries-long plan.
The true nature of some of their inventions became clear: Bandersnatchi, thought to be non-sentient livestock, were in fact intelligent, created as spies immune to telepathy. Sunflowers turned against their masters and burned Thrint homes to the ground. Other Tnuctip inventions were designed to shape Thrint society to weaken it. Sunflowers encouraged a trend for the slavers to live in isolated manors, surrounded by slaves. Mutated racing vipreen (fast-running creatures raced for entertainment and gambling) ruined the existing vipreen herding business, which along with other similar inventions lead to an economic depression prior to the Tnuctip revolt.
The war escalated until the Thrintun, rather than accept defeat, employed a device that amplified the sphere of influence of a Thrint's mind control to encompass the entire galaxy. And they gave a simple command: die. And everything in the galaxy that had evolved a backbone perished, including any Thrintun not protected by a stasis field. This course of events is alluded to in the novel The World of Ptavvs and the still functioning suicide amplifier itself is discovered in the short story Peter Robinson, at which point it is destroyed.
Several other tnuctip inventions are inadvertently discovered in the various known space novels. Among them, a prototype hyperspace shunt, discovered during the first Man-Kzin War in the story Inconstant Star by Poul Anderson. The Kzin lose the war before they can bring news of it home, and the device itself is lost.
Nivens sense of humour can be judged by reversing the letter order in the word Tnuctip.