Are We Alone?

I've been watching a lot of science shows discussing and debating this question.

I have only one question: Why don't they just look around our world--both near and far--and throughout our universe? Nature did not create just one of anything. Nature is extremely redundant. Just the fact that they can categorize everything they discover and learn of should convince them that each time they find something new, they find many others. Enough so that they can then create a category for that find.

Our astrophysicists, geophysicists, and biophysicists are focusing only on what they know of here on our very tiny world. They have nearly convinced themselves that our world is unique, that we are a "special" happenstance. REALLY?

Our scientists are only looking for life that could survive on Earth or in some way be just like us and our other earthly life forms. Have they not yet learned from all of the extremophiles they continue to find? Life forms that continue to thrive without water, light, oxygen, heat or cold, in chemicals and minerals they believed would be poisonous to life? Why do they insist on searching for life that mimics us and the average mammalian life on Earth?

To be considered "intelligent", must a life form think and communicate as we do? Are we not learning that many life forms on Earth do indeed communicate and think among their own species? Because their manner of communication differs from ours and because we do not understand them, does that mean they are not intelligent?

I say resoundingly: OF COURSE NOT! I say they are intelligent enough to survive successfully in their very dangerous environments...and they do it without destroying their environments. Unlike the human species. We may be "intelligent" enough to create things to increase our enjoyment and comfort but we have not yet learned to do it WITHOUT destroying the very things we need to continue to survive; specifically our food sources, our oxygen sources, our soil, our air.

So, who are the intelligent beings on planet Earth?