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Animal hermits can learn from their peers, researchers say, even though they rarely encounter one another in the wild. Red-footed tortoises in the wild live a typically lonely tortoise life, without even being cared for by their parents. But in the lab, they can pick up hints to solving a problem by watching a more accomplished tortoise, says cognitive biologist Anna Wilkinson of the University of Vienna. “It’s the first demonstration of social learning in reptiles,” she says. It’s also the first demonstration that nonsocial animals can watch a neighbor and then complete a task that they couldn’t figure out readily on their own, she says. The tortoises’ feats are “challenging the idea that social learning is an adaptation for social living,” Wilkinson and her colleagues say in a paper going online the week of March 30 in //Biology Letters//. In mammals, birds and insects, the power to learn from watching a neighbor has shown up in animals that live in groups, like chimps and honeybees. So scientists routinely link social learning to social living, Wilkinson says. However, she proposes that watching a neighbor may be just another way that any good learner, social or not, picks up on clues for success. “It might be the case that social learning in social and non-social species is different in interesting ways, and that would be great to know,” says animal behaviorist Bennett G. Galef of McMaster University in Hamilton, Canada, who was not involved in the study.