Back in 2008, a motherlode  of western lowland gorillas was discovered by scientists in the remote, inaccessible regions of the Congo. As a lifelong admirer of Steve Irwin and his wildlife conservation efforts, I was overjoyed by the news. I closely followed the subsequent efforts to study these magnificent creatures and was particularly intrigued by the methodology adopted. Initially, every possible precaution was taken to ensure no direct contact with them. They were, for the most part, unaware that they were being observed. This has been a standard approach in wildlife research for a long time now. This news, and the global attention it received, resurfaced in my mind recently amid the discussion and furor surrounding the arrival of 3i/Atlas . It was not merely this latest interstellar object that prompted the connection, but the broader sequence of events that some scientists, notably Dr. Avi Loeb  . The similarity between Dr. Loeb’s hypothesis and the earlier example of w...