I find this comment extremely puzzling. How do you suppose an intelligent species could go about building nuclear bombs without the ability to use tools?
The relevant kind of "ability to use tools" is whatever can be used, however inefficiently at the beginning, to start building stuff, if you apply the ingenuity of an international scientific community for 100000 years to the task; not appendages that a chimp-level chimp can use to sharpen sticks in an evening. You seem to underestimate the power of intelligence.
This is directly analogous to AI boxing, with limitations of intelligent creatures' bodies playing the role of the box. I'd expect intelligent tortoises or horses should still be capable...
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