Head

A head is a decorative block. There are six types of heads: player, zombie, skeleton, wither skeleton, creeper, and dragon.

Breaking
A mob head can be broken using anything and drops itself when broken.

If a head is pushed by a piston or comes in contact with water or lava, it breaks off as an item.

Natural generation
Dragon heads generate on end ships found in end cities.

Mob loot
A wither skeleton has a 2.5% chance of dropping a wither skeleton skull when killed by a player or tamed wolf. The chance is increased by 1% per level of Looting, for a maximum of 5.5% with Looting III.

$$, the chance is increased by 2% per level of Looting, for a maximum of 8.5% with Looting III.

Skeleton, wither skeleton, zombie, and creeper heads are also always dropped by the respective mob if it dies due to a charged creeper's explosion. If an ender dragon or the player is killed by a charged creeper, it does not drop its head.

$$, strays drop a wither skeleton skull when killed by a charged creeper. This is a bug that will be fixed in 1.17.

Decoration
Mob heads can be oriented in 16 different directions on top of a block, and 4 directions on the sides of blocks, similar to signs. They cannot be placed on top of each other, but they don't require a supporting block.

The dragon head opens and closes its mouth repeatedly like the ender dragon when placed and powered by redstone. The same animation occurs when worn by a (horizontally) moving player, zombie, skeleton, or armor stand (note: the animation does not play if the  tag is set to 1)

Wearing
The player can wear heads, similarly to pumpkins or helmets. This overlays the second layer of the player's skin.

Disguise
Wearing the corresponding mob head reduces the detection range for skeletons (but not wither skeletons), creepers, and zombies to 50% of the normal range. This is similar to (and stacks with) the reductions in detection range from sneaking and from the Invisibility status effect.

$$, wearing any mob head or carved pumpkin makes the player invisible to other players on a locator map.

Withers
Withers can be created by placing soul sand or soul soil in a T shape, and putting 3 wither skeleton skulls on top of the three upper blocks. The last block placed must be one of the three wither skeleton skulls. A dispenser can also create a wither, by placing the final skull onto soul sand directly in front of and below it.

Dispensers
A dispenser can equip a mob head on a player, mob, or armor stand with an empty helmet slot, within the block the dispenser is facing.

Dispenser can also complete the construction of a wither.

Enchantments
Mob heads can receive the following enchantments, but only through an anvil.

Player skins
Human heads have an extra usage for map makers, they can be given NBT data so that they appear with the skin of any Minecraft account. This means if a player knows that a specific account has a head that is desired to display, the NBT data can be edited to make it appear.

The command to give the player a head skinned as another player is. Commonly, this kind of head is called player head.

Another command to give the player a head with another player's skin is. SkinURL is a string encoded in Base64 containing the URL of the player's skin. A player head saves the skin of the player from the time it was created, meaning if the player changes their skin, the head still displays the original texture. This kind of head is generally called custom head.

Marc's Head Format


Marc Watson created a number of accounts with specific skins so map makers could use common heads without the risk of someone changing their skins. Nowadays, since heads do not update the skin if a player changes their skin, this is not something map-makers need to worry about, though these skins are still useful. These accounts have names in the format, for example   is the name of a Minecraft user with a zombie pigman head. MHF stands for "Marc's Head Format". There are also a few blocks and "bonus" heads, for more variety.

Because these are names of player accounts, these heads are obtained or placed using the  tag, for instance:.

The following names/heads have been made available:

MHF_Ghast MHF_Slime MHF_WSkeleton
 * Mobs
 * MHF_Alex
 * MHF_Blaze
 * MHF_CaveSpider
 * MHF_Chicken
 * MHF_Cow
 * MHF_Creeper
 * MHF_Enderman
 * MHF_Golem
 * MHF_Herobrine
 * MHF_LavaSlime
 * MHF_MushroomCow
 * MHF_Ocelot
 * MHF_Pig
 * MHF_PigZombie
 * MHF_Sheep
 * MHF_Skeleton
 * MHF_Spider
 * MHF_Squid
 * MHF_Steve
 * MHF_Villager
 * MHF_Zombie

MHF_CoconutG MHF_Melon MHF_Present2 MHF_Pumpkin
 * Blocks
 * MHF_Cactus
 * MHF_Cake
 * MHF_Chest
 * MHF_CoconutB
 * MHF_OakLog
 * MHF_Present1
 * MHF_TNT
 * MHF_TNT2


 * Bonus
 * MHF_ArrowUp
 * MHF_ArrowDown
 * MHF_ArrowLeft
 * MHF_ArrowRight
 * MHF_Exclamation
 * MHF_Question

ID




Metadata
$$, mob heads use the following data values:

Item data
Player heads use item NBT to save the owner.
 * : The item's tag tag.

Block data
A mob head has a block entity associated with it that holds additional data about the block.

Trivia

 * When destroyed by an explosion, the block always drops as an item.
 * Heads are one of the few blocks that do not have their own textures and take their textures from other objects.
 * When breaking any head, the particle effect of breaking it is the same as soul sand.
 * Despite there being a default Steve head, an Alex head cannot be obtained without using custom names.