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Turtles are common passive mobs that move both on land and in water.

Spawning

Turtles typically spawn in the Overworld on beaches, but not in its snowy variant or stone shores, occasionally in small groups of up to 5 individuals.

10% of turtles spawned will be a baby turtle.‌[Bedrock Edition only]

Drops

Turtles drop when they die:

When a baby turtle grows up to an adult it drops:

Behavior

Turtles can both move around on land and swim in water. They move slowly on land, but they can swim at a fast speed in water. 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. When on top of eggs, they levitate.[2]

Turtles will follow a player holding seagrass.

Turtles cannot be attached to leads.[3]

Turtles can be picked up by boats.‌[Java Edition only]

Baby turtles are small enough that when they walk on soul sand, they are entirely within the space at the top of the block, and therefore suffocate in it, much like endermites and silverfish.

Being attacked

Baby turtles are attacked by the following mobs:

Breeding

If two turtles are fed with seagrass, 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. Egg-filled turtles are fatter than normal ones.[verify] 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. A turtle can lay no more than 4 eggs per sand block.

Turtle eggs will go through 3 stages before hatching into baby turtles, each stage taking a random amount of time according to received random ticks. They will only hatch on sand.

The growth of baby turtles can be slowly accelerated using seagrass. Each use takes 10% off the remaining time to grow up.

Home location

The beach where the turtle is spawned is remembered by the turtle as its home beach. No matter how far away a turtle travels, it will always return to the home beach before it lays its eggs after breeding.

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 can only be obtained by using a tool with the Silk Touch enchantment.

Turtles spawned from spawn eggs make their home beach based on where the spawn egg is used. This also happens when summoned with the /summon command and spawned by mob spawners.

Data values

See also: Chunk format

Turtles have entity data associated with them that contain various properties of the mob. Their entity ID is turtle.

  • Entity data
    • Additional fields for mobs that can breed
    • Tags common to all entities
    • Tags common to all mobs
    •  HasEgg: 1 or 0 (true/false) - true if the turtle has an egg.
    •  HomePosX: The X coordinate the turtle travels toward to lay its eggs after breeding.
    •  HomePosY: The Y coordinate the turtle travels toward to lay its eggs after breeding.
    •  HomePosZ: The Z coordinate the turtle travels toward to lay its eggs after breeding.
    •  TravelPosX: Used for swimming to random points in water.
    •  TravelPosY: Used for swimming to random points in water.
    •  TravelPosZ: Used for swimming to random points in water.

Advancements

Icon Advancement In-game description Parent Actual requirements (if different) Resource location
Advancement-plain-rawThe Parrots and the Bats
Breed two animals together HusbandryBreed a pair of any of these 25 mobs: A mule must be the result of breeding a horse and a donkey for this advancement as they are not breedable together. Other breedable mobs are ignored for this advancement.husbandry/breed_an_animal
Advancement-fancy-rawTwo by Two
Breed all the animals! The Parrots and the BatsBreed a pair of each of these 24 mobs: A trader llama does not count as a llama, and a mule must be the result of breeding a horse and a donkey for this advancement as they are not breedable together. Other breedable mobs can be bred, but are ignored for this advancement.husbandry/bred_all_animals


History

August 17, 2012On 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, 2012In 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, 2017File:Turtle Revision 0.png Turtle mobs were announced at Minecraft.net.
Java Edition
1.1318w07aTurtle Added turtles.
18w07bTurtles are now bred using seagrass, instead of raw cod.
18w11aAdded drowned, which will attack baby turtles.
Bedrock Edition
1.5beta 1.5.0.4Turtle Added turtles (named sea turtles).
1.8beta 1.8.0.8Added stray cats, which will attack baby turtles.
Upcoming Bedrock Edition
1.9beta 1.9.0.2Adult turtles have a small chance to spawn already in love mode.
Legacy Console Edition
TU69CU57 1.76 Patch 38Turtle Added sea 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.

Gallery

References

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