Well, we do see this behaviour in other animals, and not just humans, or mammals even.
I realise that's not broadening the net much - we share a common ancestor with everything that could be considered "living" on this planet, so ultimately it's all "human-centric" to an extent.
But if there are forms of life that are wildly different, to the point we can't communicate with them or even understand that they're "alive" in any meaningful sense, then that's kinda out of scope ;) The definition of "alien intelligence" only includes things that we would be able to recognise as an alien intelligence. Otherwise we're just talking to the trees, and they're dull conversationalists.
You just need to see what faint a signal we receive form the Voyagers, which are deliberately pointing their antennas at us and are thousands of times closer to us than any star to appreciate how improbable it would be for us to ever detect extraterrestrial communication.
I agree, but for different reasons. My favourite way to dissolve the Fermi Paradox is to simple state that the main assumption, i.e. "the lack of evidence of extraterrestrial civilizations", is just wrong :)
The idea that life in the universe will be comprised of humanoid-esque beings that have the same perception of time as us, or the ability to communicate in a "language", is just a human-centric idea. It's us, projecting our own worldview (which has developed through millions of years of evolution) on to the infinite universe. This is the fundamental problem with positivism; using your current limited sensory knowledge to construct a complete world-picture.
Even life itself is not a neutral word; it mostly just means "carbon-based entities like those on Earth." Perhaps the reason the universe seems so empty is because we only have the ability to see things like ourselves?