wow wondered, Hmmmm, Can we call a "cry" a word? My dog growls when she apprehends a danger and shows her teeth.
I think you are right, wow, that a single "cry" is not a word, and that the website Faldage sent us to makes an equally good point when it notes that as far as animals are concerned there are only so many distinct grunts or other noises or moves that can be made. The theory is that each noise has a specific meaning. A certain type of grunt may mean "there's a lion prowling nearby in the undergrowth." There's no breakdown of the message and no way to modify it in part to, say, "there's a tiger prowling some distance away."
But I read an article recently (Smithsonian?) about prairie dogs that suggested that these unassuming little critters had a fairly complex system of danger "calls" that could identify the distance, location and type of threat. This seems an awful lot like words to me (though I would hesitate to call it language).
