I wouldn't, but I can assure you there are lots of scientists on this planet who would care.

Your examples involve creatures that we already know about and have interacted with and "integrated" into our lives (one way or another).

But I suppose the counter-example is "it depends who finds us" -- if it's an intergalactic scientific exploration team of aliens, they'll probably be as nice as can be. If it's an intergalactic mining company, maybe not so much.

The equivalent here would be the contrast between a scientific expedition to explore new species in the Amazon Rainforest (i.e. people who would be benign and take an interest in new species) vs. a bulldozing crew out to find more land in those same rainforests ("Oh look, a bird. Ok boys chop down that tree").

Comparing a few (not "lots of" as you claim) specialists scattered around societies around the world is not a good representation of civilizations around the universe (or at least, we can't assume it to be).

As human as it is, most exploration has been grounded in financial and egotistical needs, not scientific exploration. Maybe the civilization is just as curious as we would be and thus would come for selfless reasons, but that's a pretty big assumption.

Being more advanced as a civilization doesn't mean that they would be more advanced as species. Any species capable of making computers or more intelligent machines than themselves would seem to be capable of developing unlimited technological advances given enough time. There hasn't been meaningful biological evolution in humans for thousands of years and it doesn't matter.

If it were a Mars cockroach, we would desperately care.

Except it would be extremely unlikely for us to be the first new species such a space-faring civilization would be coming into contact with.

At galactic scale, there's not much difference between a Mars cockroach and a regular cockroach.

> At galactic scale, there's not much difference between a Mars cockroach and a regular cockroach.

There's not much difference between one species and another here but we still study all of them in great detail.

Don't mistake your lack of intellectual curiosity about a certain subject as being a trait shared by everyone else. I don't care about football but that doesn't mean nobody else does.

Similarly, as I said already, if you're going to go cruising about the galaxy, you're going to put people on that ship who are interested in what they're going to find. Otherwise there's no point.

Oh come on. That analogy is so weak I can barely believe you're serious.

See my response to the other guy who brought up a similar analogy.

pretty sure scientists would care about a new breed of cockroach. So it would make sense for some alien scientists, or perhaps just undergrad science majors to come and check out life on different planets.

One big mistake people do is conflate society as a whole with all its members.

Society, as a whole, probably doesn't care about a new cockroach species. But there is someone who does, just on Earth.

Similarly, among any civ that has the basic biological impulses required to become an interstellar civ, there are going to be people who want to branch out on their own, who want to study something on their own, who want to be the first to contact something new. It's all those millions of edge-case members that will do the amazing stuff.