That’s a hot take - they learn the meaning of some sounds, but I’d say that’s on a whole different order than human language. Many, many animals communicate concepts using sounds

You shouldn't dismiss the abilities of our fellow mammals too quickly. Of course they are very far from equal to us, but there are several species of mammals that have showed non-trivial use of language, it's not too much of a stretch to imagine that all mammals have at least very basic language building blocks in their brain, even if vestigial.