The way micro bacteria make up humans and humans make up companies (treated as "people" under the law), which make up cities, which make up warring countries (much like predator and prey), which make up the planet itself, I think an alien is equally likely to recognize the planet as an individual as they are to recognize a human as an individual. The borders of where life begins and ends are only important from our own perspective, from an outside perspective what's the difference between a part of you dying, the whole of you dying, your species dying, or all of earth's life dying? We're all just a slurry of fungus growing on a rock.

That's why I think earth could be defined as living creature itself. You know when you look at roads and rivers from a very high overhead view they look like veins. What do veins do? They move blood around. We are the blood of this animal and we are the brain cells of this animal.

Drifting through space, earth may as well be a cell of a larger organism. The galaxy, which in turn is a cell of the universe. Our inability to view anything beyond the universe may just be our own limitations, what if the universe is a cell of a larger organism too?