I don't like ant colony analogies because I think there is a meaningful difference between a life-form entirely unable to communicate high-level abstract though

I don't like ant colony analogies because I think there is a meaningful difference between a life-form entirely unable to communicate high-level abstract thoughts and those that are - even if it's relatively simple. For example we view apes as "lesser lifeforms" to ourselves but we still try to communicate with them, and they communicate back to some degree. Or a more extreme example would be dogs - we communicate with them all the time even if they don't have anything that interesting to say back to us. I'd also argue we still take significant interest in ants despite the fact they're unaware of us. And if we thought we could say hi to ants via pheromones we almost certainly would. The mere fact we keep records of all the species we find on Earth and try to understand them in great detail despite them being much less intelligent then ourselves I think suggests aliens would probably at least have some interest in us, even if we're not that interesting. And even with ants it's clear we have a lot to learn from them. Ant colony optimisation algorithms wouldn't exist if we didn't take an interest in ants, for example.