In "The Great Silence" by Ted Chiang, the author criticizes humankind for wanting to communicate with extraterrestrial beings while ignoring the many species here on earth.

The narrator of the story is a parrot, who wants to know why humans aren't interested in listening to his voice and those of other parrots. He insists that parrots are a nonhuman species capable of communicating with them, and yet they are ignored.

The parrot is all too aware of the Fermi paradox, the idea that in this vast universe of ours, there must be other intelligent life forms other than human beings, and yet there is no sign of life anywhere in the universe except on Earth.

One way of dealing with this paradox is for intelligent creatures to conceal their presence in order to avoid being targeted by hostile invaders. This is exactly the same strategy used by the parrot narrator, who is a member of a species driven by man to the brink of extinction.

By doing this, man has missed out on numerous opportunities to communicate with an intelligent, nonhuman species. And yet, thanks to a number of scientific experiments, parrots have been revealed to be highly intelligent creatures capable of understanding not just the words of shapes and colors but also their concepts.

The narrator is baffled, therefore, why humans should go to such extraordinary lengths, via the Arecibo telescope, to try and establish contact with extraterrestrial life forms when they can communicate with parrots right here on earth.

Being able to speak is a key part of what it means to exist in any meaningful sense. That's why humans and parrots, despite their superficial differences, actually have quite a lot in common. Various religious traditions, from Pentecostal Christians to Pythagorean mystics, have understood the fundamental importance of speaking. It's all the more tragic, then, that humans have driven parrots to within an ace of extinction.

The way things are going, Puerto Rican parrots like the narrator are going to die out in the very near future. If that happens, then they will become part of "The Great Silence" that has resulted from humankind's actions.