Mums and dads may wish to toe the line while their baby is in its travel cot - because he or she may be more judgmental than previously thought.

A new study by scientists at Yale University in the US has shown that babies are able to tell right from wrong from the age of six months, despite previous studies suggesting they have no pre-formed ideas about the concept.

Researchers showed infants puppets behaving badly and then asked them to take treats away from naughty characters.

Some of the tots did so and even smacked the 'bad' puppets without prompting.

Younger babies showed they preferred well-behaved characters by spending more time gazing at them.

Paul Bloom, one of the scientists behind the study, said it seems to suggest that people have morals from the very beginning of their lives.

"Some sense of good and evil seems to be bred in the bone … in the first six months, babies learn things much quicker than we thought possible," he added.

In January 2009, a team from the Institute for Psychology in Budapest found that babies are born with a keen sense of rhythm, New Scientist reported.

Posted by Ed Salters
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