The newborn alien mimicking David

(spoilers)

Remember, prior to this, David comes face-to-face with a six-foot tall deacon-style alien, and it doesn't kill him. Why? First and foremost, it can sense that David is not a living thing. As such, David is neither a food source, nor a potential incubator for new chest bursters.

Also, remember how, later in the film, after the xenomorph gets on board the Covenant, at one point, it uses its second set of jaws to smash a closed-circuit video monitor, thus depriving the crew of the ability to see it?

This implies these aliens are born smart. So much so that they might even be born possessing some of the knowledge their hosts had possessed. How else would a creature with no eyes even understand the concept of a video camera so well that it knows to destroy such a device?

So, the newborn that mimics David might naturally have been curious about him, once it determined he was not food or breeding stock.

Just as the previous deacon-style alien was curious about David.

In fact, the newborn might even have been curious enough, and intelligent enough, that it would attempt to mimic David, as a first step toward learning to communicate with him.

Didn't David say that he discovered that by blowing into their nostrils they would freeze and that he would have total command over them, or something like that? So obviously, he had done that to all his new 'creations' and so they knew he was their 'superior', maybe like a 'father'.

I don't understand this. Why didn't the chestburster come out looking like the ones from alien 1977. Are we supposed to believe they took a step backwards in evolution ove the next decades? Why introduce such an inconsistency when there are a million other jumps the audience is taking