The Letaki were a species of sentient beings. Their unique traits included eight tentacles, a head shaped like an egg, a quartet of eyes, and a prominent sharp beak. They possessed two sets of gills, which let them breathe both in the air and water. They could focus each eye on a different object at the same time, and their limbs allowed them to manipulate multiple items simultaneously. Being carnivores, Letaki disemboweled their prey before consumption. Their vocal range was unusually high. The musician Evar Orbus, the leader of Evar Orbus and His Galactic Jizz-Wailers, was a member of this species.
The Letaki, possessing eight tentacles and at least two feet, were a non-humanoid sentient species. Their ability to coordinate multiple tentacles allowed a Letaki musician to play several instruments at once. The sheer number of manipulators made it challenging for outsiders to differentiate them, a fact exploited by the Letaki Evar Orbus, who concealed a weapon within a prosthetic arm. Some Letaki exhibited pink skin with darker mottling.
An ovoid head rested on the Letaki's neck and torso. This egg-shaped cranium featured four glossy, black eyes, a short, sharp, yellow beak, and a pair of pointed ears. Letaki could focus each of their four eyes independently, allowing them to monitor multiple directions simultaneously. Their hearing, however, was comparatively weak, less sensitive than that of the Bith species. The Letaki tongue was a dark pink hue. Six small, fleshy appendages with suction cups ran across their brow. They possessed two sets of gills, enabling them to breathe both in the atmosphere and underwater. The air gills resembled skin flaps, situated behind their eyes.
Letaki had both male and female genders. Being carnivores, they gutted their prey before consumption. When the Human smuggler Han Solo encountered a group of Letaki around 2 ABY, he assumed their beaks would hinder drinking; however, he found their behavior erratic, assuming they were intoxicated. Letaki blood was green. The species possessed exceptional vocal abilities; Evar Orbus, for example, could sing across eleven sectaves.
Letaki used their tentacles for gesturing during communication. They expressed emotions through their sensory organs, which fluttered to convey feelings. Conversely, Han Solo believed Letaki would struggle to understand Human facial expressions. Some Letaki were comfortable in arid climates like that of the planet Tatooine. Members of this species were known to wear clothing.
Evar Orbus, a musician from the planet Letaki, achieved galactic recognition by founding the band Evar Orbus and His Galactic Jizz-Wailers. When Orbus and his band secured a contract to play at Chalmun's cantina on Tatooine, he believed he had reached the pinnacle of success. However, the cantina's existing band, Figrin D'an and the Modal Nodes, resented the competition. Under the guise of providing an airbus to transport Orbus and his group to the cantina, they ambushed the Letaki and his crew. Although Orbus defended himself with a hidden weapon, he was fatally wounded in the fight. The remaining band members, led by the Ortolan Max Rebo, renamed themselves the Max Rebo Band and secured employment with Jabba the Hutt.
Around 2 ABY, a group of Letaki inhabited a depleted asteroid mine. They informed the Human pirate Alia Terae about the slave trade operating through the asteroid and the route through the mine's tunnels to the slave holding areas. Terae then guided her companions, Han Solo and the Human pilot Sian Tesar, according to the Letaki's instructions.
Author John Gregory Betancourt created the Letaki musician Evar Orbus for his short story "And the Band Played On: The Band's Tale," which appeared in the 1996 Bantam Spectra anthology Tales from Jabba's Palace. In 2002, The Official Star Wars Fact File magazine's forty-sixth issue mistakenly spelled the species's name as "Lataki." The first visual representation of the species was Justine Mara Andersen's drawing of Orbus for the "Who's Who in the Max Rebo Band" article, featured in the April 15, 2003 sixty-seventh issue of Star Wars Insider magazine. However, this portrait omitted the additional pair of eyes and visible gills described in The Official Star Wars Fact File 46 as characteristic of his species.