Americans are fascinated with aliens. The image of Will Smith and Tommy Lee Jones defending our country against invading creatures from outer space gives form to our fear that what’s out there might not be friendly.

The slogan on the side of NASA spacecraft, “We come in peace,” is the real-life olive branch, just in case “Men In Black” turns out to be closeto the truth.

But what if the aliens on Mars look exactly like mice, frogs or baboons?

Would the astronauts remain true to the slogan emblazoned on the side of their craft? If so, it would certainly be another first for humankind.

More likely, the aliens would find themselves thrown into cages and shuttled back to Earth for intergalactic dissection.

On our own planet we have already encountered alien intelligence: sea-going animals — like octopuses who decorate their caves with “trinkets” they collect from the sea floor.

We have land animals — like fallow deer who practice birth control by reabsorbing their own fetuses when there is insufficient plant life to sustain a bigger herd.

And we have gentle beavers whose engineering feats have provided blueprints for some of our own underwater building endeavors.

There are animals of the air —who can construct homes for their families using only clay and twigs, dive on a dime and circumnavigate the globe without benefit of a compass or map.

What have we done to these aliens? We have caged them for our entertainment, eaten them, made shoes and coats from their skins, put bits in their mouths, muzzles on their noses and chains about their necks.

We’ve even used them to test nerve gases and other accessories of the wars we wage against each other.

So putting the “We come in peace” message on our spacecraft is an acknowledgment that although acting as if “might make right” can be deliriously advantageous for the Master Race here on Earth, such a policy could be our death warrant in space.

Our message really means: “Hello, out there. If you are bigger and stronger than we are, please don’t hurt us.”

Perhaps we can be excused for our unbridled aggression early on; when we first began hunting animals we were simply trying to survive in the same way aboriginal peoples and, indeed, lions and eagles, still do.

But today most of us have better options.

Being important or clever has never made it acceptable to be a bully. Rather, those with more should be protective of those with less.

Certainly we are members of a rather grand species. We can build everything from tape recorders to weather satellites and even install pipes to carry water into the Kalahari.

But other animals have impressive, if different, abilities, too. They live simply and efficiently, surviving under stark conditions without any of the accouterments of “civilization.”

The humble newt can “see” the lasting electromagnetic field. Desert mice obtain enough water to sustain themselves by placing pebbles outside their burrows to catch the dew.

Researchers at Jane Goodall’s Gombe Stream Research Center report that other-than-human primates treat illness and injuries by using naturally-occurring plant forms of emetics, antibiotics and healing salves.

Yet, as I write, there are hundreds of chimpanzees confined in laboratories in the U.S.

Simply because we can get away with it, we irradiate them and inject them with the AIDS virus, hepatitis and other infectious diseases as if they were no more than test tubes with faces.

We know they are intelligent and social beings, yet we have seized them from their homelands and families and deprived them of the freedom to pursue their lives, and contact with others of their own kind.

To those who say, “How can you compare the suffering of these animals to that of human beings?” I answer, “How can you not?”

Suffering is suffering, victims are victims and injustice is injustice, no matter where it occurs, to whom or where.

That was true when white Americans headed into the deep south to support the rights of blacks to vote and it is true now.

We look back in shame on our appalling treatment of human beings with disabilities, the disadvantaged, the elderly, institutionalized people and all manners of “others” we have abused.

Instead of trying to make amends case by case, we can simplify things by applying our principles across the board and by opposing all acts of aggression, oppression, exploitation and meanness, whether we can easily relate the victims.

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Ingrid Newkirk is the co-founder and president of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals