What you say is true, but it's worth noting that, as a rule, phylogenetically "higher" organisms do tend to have more plasticity and (perhaps as a consequence)

What you say is true, but it's worth noting that, as a rule, phylogenetically "higher" organisms do tend to have more plasticity and (perhaps as a consequence) less ability to regenerate neurons). Your songbird example is a good one. There are many species of birds that develop near normal song repertoires in the absence of con-specifics (or even, in some cases, hearing!) but trying to extrapolate that to human speech processing, or even mammalian auditory processing, is fraught with problems.