I think OP chose ants because of the scale involved. Ants form full-fledged civilizations which occupy relatively small volumes of space compared to human civilizations (population size non-withstanding) and even when building around man-made structures, they might not be able to recognize these structures as non-natural.
Yeah it could be a one and/or combination of things. We can’t really know. It’s hard to think of aliens that are so advanced that couldn’t conceptualise us, do they not have fiction? If a species were born post physical or with capabilities that seemed advanced though then I think the ants analogy does apply. Something like space whales in Star Trek to us it’s intergalactic travel to them it’s swimming.
