if they were made to explore new planets, artificially, they woulda been artificially and genenticly cherrypicked to be best suited for the enviroment, right?
Yeah, I think so too! I believe these creatures were specifically engineered to be delivered to this planet and “retrieve piece of cargo.” They seem perfectly adapted for this mission – insanely tough, have opposable thumb (it seems like at least), yellow blood just like the local wildlife (whatever the reason, maybe an adaptation to excess lead in the soil, like leadbush?), and upright walking as a feature too. I don’t see any problem with these “fox-rat-dogs” being bipedal (anthropomorphic) – just another useful trait.
My only nitpick is with the original term “combining human and animal DNA” – it sounds kinda unprofessional (I’m sure english has better ways to describe genetic engineering, lol)