Our problem is that we have very limited imagination (and sensitivities) when interacting with other sentient beings even here, on earth. For example, cetaceans evolved in the environment where vision is limited. Hence, dolphins and whales do not have emotional facial expresssions that are so important for human primates. It confuses us when interacting with them, are they sad, happy, in pain? We have no idea. Next, is our profound inability to understand their complex acoustic communication, there is no Rosetta stone, and we are completely lost again. Any race to communicate with aliens should start with decoding non-human communication systems here on earth (shameless plug, anyone is interested to support our tiny fledging startup?)

Finally, the recent situation with rescuing last living vaquita dolphins in Mexico once again demonstrated that humans have hard time imagining umwelt of other species. The plan was to capture remaining vaquitas and to put them in protected sea pens. Without any doubt, human intentions are good here, but as we often do, we go full steam, brute force into the situation. As a result, captured vaquita died from capture myopathy. This animal is shy, cryptic, and it cannot handle being surrounded by scary , noisy giants, touching it, grabbing it with its appendages, despite the fact that "giants" have all good intentions. This example is very relevant to thinking how we should interact with possible "others" or handle the signal, if it will be received one day. Even with all good intentions, we can still create chaos and danger, simply because we cannot understand "others" and how they see, experience the world.