[duncan_bayne]

Larry Niven's "stage trees" - basically, naturally evolved rockets for seeds - spring to mind, where the space travel is an instinctive, unconscious behaviour.

But I'd bet on the OPs hypothesis as well. At a guess, most space travelling species will have had to climb a similar developmental curve to our own - including agriculture (or whatever passes for it in their biosphere, unless they photosynthesize themselves), tool making, metal smelting, nuclear power, etc. etc.