I never really understood how this feature functioned, it seemed a bit random. And the poor little cub that got kidnapped never had any chance to learn skills at all!

As I understand there are severel areas in the game that can give one of your cubs a skill. And the game chooses randomly. That's a bit unfair, because in the middle of the game I had the cub who got three skills while others only one. And agree, the poor captured cub didn't even have an opportunity. The idea of skills is very good, but it doesn't work properly ))

Glad it's not just me, I went through almost the entire game without any of them learning the digging skill shown in your picture before stumbling across it by accident. I liked the game but there are several elements that could be tweaked if they ever made a sequel.