The infant crawls across a floor strewn with blocks, grabbing and tasting as it goes, its malleable mind impressionable and hungry to learn, reports New Scientist.

It is already adapting, discovering that the striped blocks are yummy and the spotted ones taste bad, the report said.

Its exploration is driven by instincts: an interest in bright objects, a predilection for tasting things, and an innate notion of what tastes good.

Darwin VII consists of a mobile base equipped with a CCD camera for vision, microphones for hearing, conductivity sensors for taste, and effectors for movement of its base, of its head, and of a gripping manipulator, university researchers Jeffrey L. Krichmar Gerald and M. Edelman write in a paper.