Llamas solve problems faster after watching people do it

Life

Llamas are able to learn from other llamas and even more effectively from humans, possibly because thousands of years of domestication gave them the ability to read human social cues

By Corryn Wetzel

Llamas can learn by watching others

Kathrin Ziegler/Stone RF/Getty Images

Llamas are better at performing tasks after watching a human or llama do it first. This ability to learn from others, called social learning, is common among highly intelligent animals like primates but had never before been documented in llamas.

To investigate if llamas (Lama glama) could learn from others, researchers challenged 30 llamas on three farms in Germany to find a food reward behind a fence. On one side of a rectangular enclosure, behind a V-shaped metal fence, researchers placed a bowl of …

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