Turtles are common passive mobs that move both on land and in water.
Spawning
Turtles spawn in the Overworld on warm beaches, occasionally in small groups of up to 5 individuals.
Drops
Turtles drop 0–2 pieces of sea grass upon death and 1–3 experience orbs if killed by a player or tamed wolf.
When baby turtles grow into adults they drop 1 scute.
Behavior
Turtles can both move around on land, and swim in water. While on land, turtles move slowly, but in the water, they can swim at a fast speed. Like other passive mobs, they will move around aimlessly and will flee when attacked. When on land, they will generally attempt to move to the nearest water source.
Turtles will follow a player holding sea grass.
Being attacked
Baby turtles are attacked by the following mobs:
- Zombies, Zombie Villagers, and Husks
- Drowned
- Skeletons and Strays
- Wither Skeletons
- Wild Ocelots and wild Wolves
All three types of zombies, as well as drowned and zombie pigmen, will also stomp on and destroy turtle eggs.
Home location
The beach where the turtle is spawned at will be remembered by the turtle as its home beach. No matter how far away a turtle travels, it will always return to the home beach to lay its eggs.
Baby turtles get their home location from the position of the turtle eggs that they hatched from. If the player were to pick up the eggs and move them elsewhere, the baby turtles will remember the spot where they hatched as their home beach. Turtle eggs only hatch on sand.
Breeding
If two turtles are fed sea grass, they will enter love mode. One of the turtles will then have an egg in its inventory, and will begin making its way back to its home beach. Once the egg-filled turtle returns to its home, it will find a nearby sand block to lay the eggs on. After several seconds of digging action on top of the sand, it will lay 1–4 turtle eggs, which go through several stages and hatch at night. A turtle can lay no more than 4 eggs per sand block.
The growth of baby turtles can be slowly accelerated using sea grass. Each use takes 10% off the remaining time to grow up.
History
| release | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| August 17, 2012 | On Reddit, Jeb was asked "I asked at pax about turtles, any work done about those?" and replied "No... I saw Mo' Creatures' turtles and got a bit demotivated to do my own ones. Maybe later..." | ||||
| September 19, 2012 | In a Reddit post anticipating the addition of another animal mob (which turned out to be the bat in 12w38a), Jeb replied to confirm that it would not be a turtle: "The truth is that I'll maybe end up adding turtles one day, it's just that Mo's turtles are difficult to top." | ||||
| December 26, 2017 | Turtle mobs were announced at Minecraft.net. | ||||
| upcoming | |||||
| 1.13 | 18w07a | Added turtles. | |||
| 18w07b | Turtles are now bred using sea grass instead of raw cod. | ||||
| 18w11a | Added drowned, which will attack turtles. | ||||
Issues
Issues relating to "Turtle" are maintained on the bug tracker. Report issues there.
Trivia
- With a height of 0.12 blocks, baby turtles are the shortest mobs in the game.
- Turtles cannot be attached to leads.[1]
Gallery
- Turtle and Baby Turtle.png
A baby turtle on top of the head of an adult.








