Entity



Entities encompass all dynamic, moving objects throughout the Minecraft world.

General behavior
All entities have these properties:
 * A position, rotation, and velocity (as according to Newtonian mechanics).
 * A specific volume they occupy, which consists of multiple 3-dimensional boxes with fixed height and width (rectangle when viewed from the top, and not rotating).
 * Current health (except for entity tiles, items, projectiles (including potions), area effect clouds and experience orbs).
 * Whether they are on fire. Fire reduces health gradually and displays flames covering the entity.
 * Status effects, caused mainly by potions. Spiders can also spawn with effects when playing on Hard mode.

Most entities can be pushed around by water currents, and some (e.g. arrows) can have their trajectory altered by explosions if already traveling at speed. Some entities can be renamed by a name tag on them.

Entities cannot pass through solid blocks. Most types of entities prevent blocks from being placed in the space they occupy, except for resources (dropped items) and experience orbs, which are automatically pushed out of the block to open air. Also, if an entity does overlap a block, (due to falling sand or a door being swung), then it is free to move out of the solid block but not back in. (For example, if a door is closed on you, you can jump up and stand on top of the bottom-half door block, if there is air above the door.)

Entities are lit according to the light level of the block their position is in. For example, if a minecart runs over a non-straight track directly into a solid block, it turns black because solid blocks always have a light level of 0; arrows are also sometimes seen to turn black, especially if fired shallowly into the ceiling.

Further notes
Item frames, paintings, and lead knots are unique in that, although they are entities, they align to the block grid and are completely immobile.

Arrows, TNT and falling sand (and its variants) are assumed to have infinite health because they are not destroyed by explosions (although they can be moved by explosions, and they can also be fired out of TNT cannons), nor by being on fire for long periods. However, they can still be killed with the use of the command.

Boats and minecarts

 * See also: Transportation (contains information about speed)

Boats and minecarts appear to recover health over time. For example, they can be broken by hitting them quickly, but cannot be destroyed by hits with unarmed hand with a pause after each hit. The amount of wobbling displayed by boats and minecarts when struck appears to indicate their current health.

Gravity-affected blocks


Gravity-affected blocks include sand, gravel, anvils, red sand, dragon eggs and concrete powder.

A gravity-affected block normally exists as a block, but when its support is removed, it becomes a falling (object) entity and falls down until hitting another object, at which point it places itself as a block at the nearest on-grid position, or becomes an item if that position is occupied by a non-solid block (such as a torch). The only exception is the anvil, which deletes any non-solid block it lands on. This glitch can be used to break bedrock and other blocks that cannot be mined in survival mode.

While these blocks ordinarily fall straight down, their trajectory can be redirected by explosions, soul sand/magma blocks in water, and pistons with slime blocks. It is also possible to modify the velocity and direction of falling sand by using commands or third-party programs. A gravity-affected block despawns or drops as an item if it does not land after falling for 30 seconds, or 5 seconds if falling into the Void.

If a cave generates underneath sand during world creation, the sand remains floating until it receives a block update. This means that a single falling sand block can trigger the collapse of an entire region of sand. In Pocket Edition, any gravity-affected block (sand, gravel, red sand) generated over a cave, dungeon, or under an overhang remains floating until it receives a block update.

Right-clicking
Entities with interactions (such as boats, minecarts, cats, villagers, tamed parrots, and tamed wolves) do not stop the  action of a tool you are holding. For example, a water bucket on a tamed wolf causes the wolf to sit, but also empties the bucket near or onto the wolf.

Riding


Entities may be riding on, or attached to, other entities. When this is the case, only the lower/"outer" entity's volume collides with other things, and only that entity can control movement. However, there are exceptions: players riding minecarts, boats or saddled horses, baby zombies riding chickens, and skeletons riding horses or boats. The only current legitimate combinations of riding entities are:


 * A mob or player in a minecart or boat.
 * A player on a saddled pig, horse, donkey, mule, skeleton horse or llama.
 * Any type of skeleton on a spider or cave spider; also known as a spider jockey.
 * Parrot on player shoulder.
 * Any type of baby zombie or zombie pigman on a chicken or other mobs; also known as a chicken jockey.
 * Skeleton traps; skeletons riding skeleton horses.
 * Pillager, vindicator, or evoker riding a ravager.

It is possible to have multiple levels, such as two parrots on the player's shoulder who is riding a pig in a minecart.

Entities can also be stacked on top of each other with the use of the and  commands. For example, using summons a spider jockey.

If an entity is riding another entity, the top entity cannot teleport because as soon as the teleport is made, the entity is teleported back to riding the other entity. Since Minecraft smooths out movements by showing entities at locations between new and old positions, this may result in seeing the entity at several locations between riding the other entity and their teleport location.

Types of entities
The table below lists types of entities that currently exist in Minecraft.

Entities listed as "solid" obstruct the passage of other entities.

The size is in block lengths (measured in meters; note that 1 block is 1m3), and is the size of an axis-aligned bounding box with the specified width in both horizontal dimensions (X and Z) and the specified height in the Y dimension. This box does not rotate when the object rotates visually.

For a list of numeric entity IDs, see Data values.

Motion of entities
Gravity works differently in Minecraft than the real world, as not everything is subject to the same acceleration. Additionally, there is a drag force proportional to velocity, again dependent on the entity.