If you had a picture of the Kyanah in your mind's eye, prepare to wipe it away, because I'm here with the definitive answers (but no AI art
)!
They have the same general body plan as a human, with two legs, two arms, and a head connected to a torso, and a bipedal posture, but there are many key differences, including a thick and robust tail which is used for balance and plays a role in unarmed combat, often being used to trip up enemies. Average adult height of different ethnic populations ranges from 141-155 cm, while average mass ranges from 54-73 kg, groups from warmer climates tend to have taller and lankier frames, while those from cooler regions are shorter and more compact. There is no appreciable difference in either between males and females, although as with humans, nutrition, diet, and genetics induce considerable variation in height and weight. Kyanah have scaly skin and no hair, with populations in most of the northern hemisphere, including their original habitat, and some temperate regions in the south having a dull blue skin tone, which can be somewhat more vibrant with a slight indigo complexion in the very high northern latitudes, though this is rarely considered a separate racial group in modern Kyanah demography. Populations from the scorching hot and sunny equatorial regions have evolved elevated melanin levels, resulting in a deep brown skin tone, examples of this adaptation date back at least 15-18 thousand years. In the far south, many populations have evolved more opaque skin and a grayish complexion in the past 5-7 thousand years, though this is not universal.
Kyanah have four fingers and toes on each hand and foot, which end in claws; they are believed to have lost the ability to retract their claws around 5-6 million years ago, with the advent of bipedalism. The limbs are slightly shorter than a human of comparable size, but the head is proportionally about the same size, albeit with a broader and flatter skull and a protruding snout, and enlarged, floppy ears that sit higher on their head; these are believed to be used for both heat dissipation and display purposes. Kyanah are obligate carnivores, gaining all their caloric needs from meat, though they are willing to occasionally consume certain plant matter for taste or extra micronutrients--mostly tubers and nuts, they avoid their planets' analogues of leaves and grasses entirely. They can eat almost any non-toxic meat from their planet, but prefer medium to large game. Their dental structure reflects this, with 38 teeth, including 3 pairs of canines, the top-front "main" pair of which can reach 2.5 centimeters. Teeth take up to a year to grow in and can be continuously replaced until old age, though replacement can also take up to a year. Kyanah evolved to use these teeth, which curve inwards, to grip onto prey and tear out chunks of flesh using their powerful neck muscles. Kyanah eyes range from light yellow to dark brown and they have excellent color vision and movement detection, but poorer overall visual acuity than humans. On the contrary, their senses of hearing and smell are considerably stronger, up to 60 times better than humans in the latter case. Despite this, visual communications, including written language, are still broadly used. Being from a planet with 40% higher gravity, they have a considerably higher muscle and bone density than an equivalently sized human, making it impossible for most Kyanah to swim. They are considerably faster on land than a human; even a sedentary desk worker can easily exceed 30 km/h in short bursts, and world class athletes can be in the 60-70 km/h range, though they have far less endurance, partially due to an inability to sweat, forcing them to rely on panting and heat dissipation through their enlarged ears to thermoregulate--Kyanah are warm-blooded with a normal body temperature of 51.8 Celsius.
They are an egg laying species, laying elliptical eggs measuring 13x8 cm on average, in groups of two as a redundancy mechanism. Eggs typically hatch in 65-75 Earth days, resulting in a 400-gram hatchling. Due to their small size and limited brain matter available, their initial weeks and months they rely heavily on mimicry and hard-coded instinct to survive, and they require constant stimulation and socialization from adults for their higher brain functions to come online. As their teeth have not come in at this point, they consume chewed up and regurgitated meat provided by the adults in their pack. However, they grow rapidly, consuming nearly half their weight in food per day in the first few weeks after hatching, and by 1 Earth year, they have reached a more respectable 10 kilograms. Sexual maturity is typically reached around 9-10 Earth years, with typical lifespan being 50-60 without technological intervention.
Internally, the Kyanah body also holds some interesting surprises. They have an internal skeleton like Earth vertebrates, but their bone mineral of choice is silicon dioxide--they literally have quartz bones and teeth. They additionally have indigo-based blood, and use peptide chains to store genetic material--they have 0% DNA in common with humans, because they literally don't have DNA. While they do vocalize and have spoken language, their vocal cords aren't suited to replicate human speech (nor vice versa); their vocalizations have been described as vaguely crocodilian in nature, but with a higher pitch and cadence, and more complex patterns as they are actually speaking a language and not merely vocalizing. Despite this, most of their internal organs seem to have a fairly similar structure and placement to humans, with the exception of the brain, which is kind of out there, so deserves its own post.