Researchers had already discovered the capacity for vocal learning in species other than humans, including in songbirds, hummingbirds, parrots, cetaceans such as dolphins and whales, pinnipeds such as seals, elephants and bats.
This is also something done with ocean recording, where they're able to put out ocean recorders for a month to listen to mammalian communication with pinnipeds or whales or any of those things.