Now, now, Ferret. I know humans are animals. But let me delve deeper into it.
Ants can do some pretty amazing things Without any kind of writing system they are born with innate abilities such as construction, but I mean some incredibly complex buildings. Certain species of ants can even enslave other ants. This, though most individual ants live hardly over a week. Ants probably can't reason, don't have feelings don't have desires other than the basest ones. They, though pure instinct(well, that and guidance from the queen ant. WHO DOES IT ON PURE INSTINCT.), can do the equivalent of what most humans would need years of study for.
It's fair to assume any E.T.s that have mastered space flight would be further from us technologically. But that doesn't necessarily mean they have a civilization, a society, some form of government or even thinking in words. In that sense, well, it would really come down to IF they find something they like.
It comes back to the Columbus metaphor. The whole thing can be narrowed down to thinking at the time, commanding structures at the time and good old fashioned greed. Spain, at the time, had just gotten their land after a bunch of fights with the moors, and wanted to establish trading routes with India. So, upon finding a "new" land filled with gold, they used the logic of "we are a mighty, god-blessed country, and this are dirty, naked heathens who happen to live very near gold, let's just make them get the gold for us."
The situation would be very different if Spain found a new country today. International pressure and dissent would keep Spain from taking a land and their gold and their people. Plus Spain isn't the hegemonic power it used to be back then.
What all that backstory is supposed to lead me to is that context matters, and we don't know the context in which our theoretical first contact race is going through. What if it's a species that never learned to kill because it wasn't challenged? We kill because it helped us survive so much. We don't know what this guys have been through. What if they have individual countries, like we do? What if there's a "Space U.N." keeping them in check? What if they are dumber and less advanced than us, but found Space flight technology from another race by accident?
I mean, it's ridiculous now, but why would Alien history be any less complex than human history?
t: 
