Learning that occurs without obvious immediate reinforcement, and that becomes apparent only later when conditions favour its expression.

Animals exploring an environment without any obvious reward often turn out to have learned its layout, as becomes evident when they later need to navigate it. A dog who has wandered around a new house for a few days, without being deliberately taught anything, will typically know where doors lead and where favoured resting spots are. A horse who has been in a paddock for a week will know where shade is, where water is, where the safer corners are. A cat who has been in a new home for a few weeks will know multiple routes between rooms and multiple favoured perches.

Latent learning matters for understanding how animals build environmental knowledge in everyday life, and is one of the reasons enrichment, exploration, and unstructured time have welfare and behavioural value. Animals are not learning only during deliberate training sessions; they are learning continuously through their experience of the environment, even when no obvious reinforcement is occurring.

The concept was first systematically demonstrated by psychologist Edward Tolman in the 1930s through studies of rats in mazes. Tolman showed that rats who had been allowed to explore a maze without rewards subsequently learned to navigate it for food more quickly than rats without prior exposure. The exploration without reinforcement had produced learning that became apparent only when reinforcement was introduced.

The findings were important historically because they challenged the strict behaviourist view that all learning required external reinforcement. Latent learning showed that animals can acquire useful information about their environment in the absence of explicit reinforcement, then deploy that information later when relevant.

In applied animal behaviour work, the concept of latent learning has implications for management. Animals with limited environmental experience (animals kept in restricted housing, animals never given time to explore new environments) tend to be less adaptable and less capable than animals with rich latent learning histories. Providing opportunities for exploration, even without specific training goals, contributes to behavioural flexibility and welfare.