Yea, we simply don't know about the intelligence of other things, and so I don't get the perspective that other things are the thing less intelligent when we're in the same boat as them as not being able to communicate with them. There are symbiotic relationships like cats and dogs, and mammals generally share a certain something, but we still have little to no knowledge of what's going on, even in mammals, much less more exotic things. For the octopus, we recognize intelligent of things we notice, but what about intelligence they have that isn't noticed by us.

Your description reminded me of a book called The Dragon's Egg. I haven't read it but need to. The gist is that there's a species that somehow thrives on or in a neutron star. However, their time scales are not slow but extremely fast. That's all I know about it other than it apparently being a tutorial on neutron stars masquerading as a novel.