the problem with humans and reality
I shall use this metaphor: humans are rulers - I don't mean leaders, I mean the type of ruler you find on a desk in a maths lesson for measuring things or for drawing straight lines.
So whenever humans try to understand something, e.g., life on another planet, whether animals have imagination, whether humans are superior to animals because we have language, the only available method that the ruler has in order to reach a conclusion is to measure things against itself.
Humans literally do that, they compare things to what humans can do. Back to our metaphor, a ruler can measure only length. It cannot even measure distance, not really. We have odometers in cars to measure distance.
If you ask a ruler what the temperature is today, it will have no idea and may deny that such a thing as "temperature" even exists. The ruler also cannot fathom such things as "weight" or "speed".
So from the ruler's perspective, these things, "changes in speed" or "weight fluctuations" are simply not happening. At most, the ruler may acknowledge their existence - if it is undeniable - but relegate them to an inferior status since they cannot be measured (and therefore understood) by length.
... if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid.
Likewise, if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree then you will live your whole life believing that fish are stupid. Thankfully, not all humans do that. I mean, somebody came up with that quote, maybe Einstein, maybe not.
So yes, generally speaking, humans need language to communicate; therefore, many humans mistakenly assume that when animals make sounds with their mouth, they are doing something similar - "speaking" in the same way that humans do (because we measure things against ourselves). And since animals make only a limited range of sounds, they are considered "less than".
In fact, animals use vocal expressions the way humans move their hands when talking. That is an accurate comparison. For animals, vocal expressions are simply an extension of their primary method of communication.
Humans have a limited range of hand movements when communicating, and animals have a limited range of vocal sounds when communicating.
Animals, all of them, communicate in a way that most humans have long since lost the capacity to do, and it does not involve making sounds. Maybe one day all humans will recover this ability.
And even though I generalise about humans being rulers in the way I've described, and we all are, myself included, at least there are many rulers with the imagination to recognise that if a ruler can't measure certain things, they may yet exist.