It is a study of information. A meme that never impacted behaviour, even indirectly, and never will may as well not exist in the memesphere. One can look at memetics from the purely information theoretic PoV, but frankly there are better purely IT techniques to use than memetics. Information is a technology spawned by bhaviour. Information isn't technology.
Information exists in the world with or without behaviour.
Cars are made of metal and metalurgists don't study cars but car designers study metallurgy. In 1000yrs, metallurgists may very well study cars just as geologists today study Roman concrete. I never said animal communications were interesting, in the same sense that the CoV ML is interesting.