Wolf

Wolves are new mobs introduced in Beta 1.4. Notch had confirmed the addition of these animals upon having breakfast with an idol of his, likely Peter Molyneux. On March 18th, 2011, a video was posted showing a preview of wolves, which were being made by Jeb. Wolves spawn in forest and taiga biomes. Wolves may also be considered the "pet dogs" as previously mentioned by Notch. Wild wolves are usually neutral. As of now, they are not known to drop anything. At the moment you can also have as many wolves as you want until Mojang wants to limit the number you can have tamed. Wolves do spawn on Multiplayer servers, and they continuously make whimpering noises even when they are at full health, because Jeb mistakenly used client-side health instead of synced health.

Taming
To tame a wolf, you have to give it bones until a puff of heart particles appears and it gains a red collar, which indicates that the wolf has been tamed. The number of bones required is random. You can have more than one tame wolf at a time.

Once given enough bones, they will become friendly. They will now protect you, follow you around, and will attack mobs that you have attacked in melee. Tamed wolves will not attack mobs that you hit with arrows, nor will they attack creepers. Wolves will also not attack mobs if they are sitting. A wolf's tail will rise and lower depending on its health, and it can be restored with cooked or raw pork (which can also be used for luring them). Wolves are able to eat other foods, but only raw/cooked porkchops will heal them. They are unable to climb ladders, but will teleport to you if you create a large distance between yourself and them as long as they are not sitting or trapped in a minecart. On a rare occurrence tamed wolves can duplicate. Tame wolves will attack you if you get one of your own arrows to hit you. They will attack like this even from the sitting position.

To help yourself find wolves, make a small house inside a forest or tiaga biome, then sleep inside it for a couple of nights. These Mobs only spawn when you are 24 blocks away from them, so sleeping in the middle of/ near where wolves spawn will help you find them much quicker. There must be a few torches near where they will spawn. Another excellent tactic to find wolves is to find a snowy biome and a grassy biome, preferably 60 blocks apart. Then, put torches in each of the biomes. Start by waiting at the grassy biome for a few moments, then walk towards your snowy biome. kill/tame any mobs and return to grassy biome. return to the snowy biome and do the same (kill/tame any mobs). This is a good tactic because you can have spawning points in both possible biomes of wolves.

Wild/Untamed
Wolves spawn in neutral (untamed) packs of 1-8, Wild wolves will randomly attack nearby passive mobs, but will not attack the player unless provoked. If you hold out a bone or raw porkchop but not give it to them they will tilt their head. Wolves can swim, and will shake water droplets off of their bodies when exiting water. They will not go underwater, however.

Hostile
Wolves will become hostile towards the player if attacked. Hostile wolves change in appearance: their eyes become red and the contrast level of their fur texture increases (perhaps meant to indicate hair bristling). Hostile wolves will attack the player as a pack. On multiplayer if one player attacks a wolf, that wolf will be hostile to all players. Hostile wolves will growl when near the player. Although you can usually outrun hostile wolves, and a single wolf only has a 0.5 attack strength, it is not recommended that you turn a wolf hostile because they are rather rare and useful once tamed. However, in large groups they can take quite a toll on your health if the whole pack becomes hostile. Note: Once you turn a wild wolf hostile, they can't be tamed.

Tame
When tamed, a wolf's eyes will change to two white pixels and one black pixel, making it look less aggressive. A tame wolf will not attack the player, even if the player attacks it. Tame wolves will join into melee combat against the player's current target, with a few exceptions. Wolves will only target one mob at a time and will not switch targets until it is killed. They will never attack creepers. They will also not attack if they are sitting, though they will stand and defend the player if he is attacked.

Tame wolves turn their head to the side and beg if the player is holding a cooked or raw porkchop. When told to sit, tamed wolves will perform an idle animation by turning around and looking at their surroundings.

Wolves do spawn in "Peaceful" Mode and will still attack if provoked. When changing the difficulty to "Peaceful," tamed wolves are not removed from the game.

If you manage to hit yourself with an arrow, your tamed wolves will attack you. Because they will be friendly towards you after respawning, it is usually better to let them kill you than to kill them.

Health
A wolf's health status may be determined by checking its tail; the angle between his hind legs and tail indicates its health (100° for 100%, 50° for 50% health). Tamed wolves will whimper if they are low on health. Feeding a wolf pork (both cooked and raw pork, both heal the same amount of health) will increase its health. Wolves can also eat cooked and uncooked fish, but this does not heal them. Bread does not hurt them, despite popular belief.

Movement
Tame wolves will follow you but also wander around. They will take any available path to the player, not just walk directly towards like hostile mobs do. They can walk through open doors, but only if they are jumping and trying to go through them or being pushed by another mob. Wolves are able to walk through 1x1 holes and can turn around in them. Wolves will attempt to walk through obstacles in order to attack, but will not path around them. Tamed wolves will follow you up ladders only if they are pushed on them.

Wolves often jump around when the player is not moving, and often receive fall damage when near cliffs or even gradual descents. When following the player down a descent, they will often find a safe path to the player rather then a straight path to the player, avoiding fall damage. Wolves will not avoid walking into lava, cacti, or fire, and so may die even if they're following a player taking a safe route.

Wolves will teleport to you if they get too far behind (which happens often). The distance between you and a wolf before it teleports is roughly 32 blocks. It is possible for tame wolves to teleport to an inaccessible location (such as under ice) and may die as a result. A Wolf in a minecart will have trouble teleporting to you, and a wolf will not teleport to you if you are swimming in water that is deeper than 1 block or if you are in a minecart. They will also not teleport to you if you are standing on ice, but they will respawn next to you when you get close enough to land.

When you right-click on a wolf they will sit and stay in that spot, and will not teleport to the player. A wolf will stand up if it is in water or when it is hurt (including by being on fire, so it is difficult to keep a wolf on fire from wandering back into the fire).

Wolves cannot travel to the Nether; if the player does, the wolves will remain in the first world until the player returns.

Porkchop
If you hold up a porkchop to a standing tamed wolf, it will come running at you 13% faster than normal, and will most likely avoid running away from the player.

Porkchop Glitches

 * A rare glitch has been known to occur when you save while a tamed wolf is sitting. When you come back to the game and make it stand up, then just right after you've clicked (you need to be very quick), hold up a porkchop, and the wolf will run towards you in sitting position.

Drops
Beta
 * Nothing

History

 * Wolves were released in Beta 1.4, on March 31st, 2011.

Bugs

 * If you save while your wolves are sitting, they may never stand up again. To fix this, get something to damage you (spider, skeleton, zombie, etc.) This can also be fixed by dumping water on them.
 * Although wolves are meant to spawn in Taiga and Forest biomes only, they can (rarely) be found elsewhere.
 * If Minecraft crashes, the number of tamed wolves you have may increase. However, some might also disappear.
 * There is a glitch that when a tamed wolf is inside a minecart (standing), if you go too far away from your wolf, the wolf will teleport to you and it will immediately fly back into the minecart, this will happen repeatedly. This can be fixed by destroying the minecart.
 * If a wolf is swimming, Minecraft will sometimes play the "shaking" sound.
 * If you tame a wolf while it's in the middle of jumping, the wolf will go into a "sitting" pose, but continue to bounce up and down indefinitely. This can be fixed by making the wolf sit.
 * Wolves can push you out of your bed, but you will still sleep.
 * In SMP, a player who logs in will see all sitting wolves as standing until they are removed and put back into position.
 * Tamed wolves can teleport inside transparent blocks such as slabs. This can mean they can get stuck, or not follow you.
 * It is possible to push a wolf into a block and therefore suffocate it, done by having two wolves sit, and then pushing one wolf by the other into a solid block.
 * There is a rare bug that if a player feeds a wolf a porkchop, the player's health also increases. although this could just be because the player was standing too far away from the wolf when he right-clicked, which, obviously results in simply eating the porkchop.
 * A rare glitch can occur if you save while a tamed wolf is in sitting position, then come back and hit it. They will then jump toward you in the sitting animation and attack you. This can be fixed by forcing it to move by dumping water on it.
 * If you uninstall then reinstall minecraft, when you load your game your wolf(s) may disappear.

Trivia

 * If you snag a wild wolf with a fishing rod, it will turn hostile regardless of the fact that the rod does not damage it.
 * When wolves attack a big (2x2x2) slime, they simply push the slime around.
 * Wolves cannot go into the Nether unless hacked in. They behave no differently than if they were in the normal world.
 * Wolves are the first official tameable mob in Minecraft.
 * Jeb has said that wolves may have color variations, but he "would have to run that through notch".
 * Wolves do not trample crops. They will also not make step sounds, or make quieter ones than default.
 * Tamed wolves seem to have difficulties sometimes when walking through single and double doors. They will not always follow you through those doors but they will try to find a way around, if there isn't a way around the door(s), your tamed wolf will teleport to you.
 * If a hostile mob (besides a creeper) attacks a player, the wolf will react and attack the mob to defend the player, even if the wolf was told to sit. This means that they will attack the player if the player injures himself, i.e. through shooting oneself with arrows. This can be extremely useful if the player is trying to sleep and is attacked in their sleep, as it's more than likely the wolves will be beside the player at the time.
 * If you attack another player on SMP, even if PvP is off, a tamed wolf will attack the opposing player.
 * If a wolf is in a downward water current, they will not float, and if not removed will drown.
 * Wolves and Slimes are the only mobs that can be hostile to the player on peaceful mode.
 * If you die, the wolf will not teleport to you, but it can be recovered by returning to the spot of death.
 * Wolves are rare and hard to find, but an area can be created (grass with torches) wherein they can spawn.
 * Judging by the color of its coat and the biome in which it spawns, the wolf in Minecraft seems to be based on the real world gray wolf.
 * Hostile wolves respond similarly to zombie pigmen, as attacking one will make the whole pack attack you.
 * Wolves have a brown markings on their coat. When they are Hostile, the markings become darker. When Tamed, the markings become lighter.
 * If you attack a mob, then order a wolf that is pathing to attack the mob to sit, the wolf will attack the mob by bouncing toward it while sitting.
 * When the player is idle in a boat, a tamed wolf will push it around in a way similar to its behavior on land.
 * Most of the time if possible, wolves will teleport into liquids. Thus, if a wolf is brought underground near lava, the wolf will teleport into the lava, most surely killing it. Therefore, it is not recommended bringing a wolf underground or near an Incinerator.
 * If you are in a house, your wolves may teleport to the roof of the house, thus they may get hurt.
 * Wolves do not survive drops even with a water break.
 * If a wolf teleports to you it can spawn inside a block of glass and be stuck inside.
 * If you tame multiple wolves, one wolf will always follow you on foot. However, if you move a large distance relatively fast (ie: walking in a straight line across a plain) one or more of the other wolves will idly walk in circles upon becoming a certain distance away, and will teleport if the player moves any farther away.
 * One can make a doggy door by making a 1x1 tunnel that leads into your house, as tamed wolves will use it when trying to walk inside rather than teleport, which is safer by far(tested and proved). Then, once the wolf it through, simply fill that 1x1 tunnel with an easy to destroy block like sand, gravel, or any cloth type. Gravel is the least recommended, because it will sometimes drop flint instead of gravel when broken, and you wont have anything to fill the doggy-door up with.