They are riffing off the recent discovery of phosphine on Venus.
Anyway, the anthros want in:
Rather than assuming the universality of a Euro-American worldview that places humans at the center, anthropologists have explored how cultures locate the place of humans in relation to the other inhabitants of their cosmologies, which include animals, gods, demons, and other entities in this world and beyond.
In other words, anthropologists look at the diverse ways that human understandings expand beyond the earthly realm and into the cosmic and the divine. After all, as anthropologists Debbora Battaglia, David Valentine, and Valerie Olson write in a 2015 essay about the anthropology of outer space: “Humans incorporate entire universes in their worlds.”
More recently, some anthropologists have turned their attention to astronomy and astrobiology. This work looks at how the planetary sciences are themselves shaped by a specific “cosmic imagination” or ways of understanding the place of humans in the cosmos.
Gideon Lasco, “What If There Is Life on Venus?” at Sapiens
Of course, there’s the detail of actually finding any extraterrestrial life forms before we all fight viciously for the right to represent them as their agents and, if they are intelligent (but not especially so) get them to sign long-term contracts … 😉
See also: Tales of an invented god