A turtle is a common passive mob that moves both on land and in water.
Spawning
Turtles typically spawn on sand in the Overworld on beaches with daylight, but not in its snowy variant or stone shores, occasionally in small groups of up to 5 individuals.
10% of turtles spawned are babies.
In Java Edition, Turtles spawn at light levels greater than 8 below 4 blocks above sea level (typically 62), on sand.
In Bedrock Edition, turtles spawn in groups of 2-6, at light level 7 or higher, at altitude 60-67. They also take a few minutes to lay eggs.
Drops
When turtles die, they drop:
- 0–2 seagrass. The maximum amount is increased by 1 per level of Looting, for a maximum of 0-5 with Looting III.
- 1–3, if killed by a player or tamed wolf.
- 1 bowl, if killed by lightning.[1]
When a baby turtle grows up to an adult it drops:
- 1 scute
Upon successful breeding, 1–7 is dropped.
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 move around aimlessly and flee when attacked. When on land, they generally attempt to move to the nearest water source with direct sky access. When in an enclosed area, such as a player-made enclosure, they generally swim in circles if water is in the area, and rarely go on land to explore, if there is any.
Turtles cannot be attached to leads,[2] but they can be led by a player holding seagrass within 10 blocks of the turtle.
Turtles can be picked up by boats[Java Edition only] and minecarts.
Predators
Baby turtles are attacked by the following mobs:
- Zombies, Zombie Villagers, Husks and Drowned
- Skeletons, Strays and Wither Skeletons
- Wild Ocelots, wild Wolves, stray Cats and Foxes
- Vindicators named "Johnny"
- Withers
- Zombie pigmen
- Zoglins
Zombies and their variants deliberately trample on turtle eggs, causing them to break.
Home beach
Each turtle remembers the block on which it hatched as its home beach. No matter how far away the turtle travels, it always eventually returns to its home beach to lay its eggs after breeding. Turtles only spawn in the beach biome and its variants, but it will remember the block on which they hatched out of their egg as their home beach, regardless of the biome.
If the player uses a tool enchanted with Silk Touch to obtain and move turtle eggs to a new location before hatching, the baby turtles remember the new hatching location as their home beach.
If a turtle is spawned from a spawn egg, summoned with the /summon command, or spawned by mob spawners, it remembers the spawn location as its home beach.
Breeding
Feeding two turtles seagrass causes them to enter love mode, causing one of the turtles to have eggs in its inventory and appear a bit bigger (about .2 of a block) than normal turtles. The pregnant turtle then travels back to its home beach, which is where it first spawned. Upon arrival, it seeks a nearby sand block on which to lay its eggs. The turtle digs vigorously for several seconds a few times - with pauses, on top of the sand, and then lays 1–4 turtle eggs. The pregnant turtle can breed again immediately after laying the eggs while the other turtle can mate immediately after mating.
Eggs
Eggs can be placed on Sand and Red Sand[upcoming: JE 1.16] in clusters of up to 4. Using an egg on the sand places a single egg, and using an egg on an existing egg cluster of size <4 adds that egg to the cluster. Eggs can be destroyed by jumping on them, hitting them, walking over them or dropping items on them. . They are destroyed one at a time (decreasing the cluster size). A turtle can walk on the eggs without breaking them. Harvesting eggs with Silk Touch drops an egg, which can land on the remaining eggs, breaking one of them.
Turtle eggs go through 3 stages before hatching into baby turtles, each stage taking a random amount of time according to received random ticks. Turtle eggs hatch only on Sand and Red Sand[upcoming: JE 1.16], during both day and night, though the eggs grow faster during the night. In general, the hatching process can take around an hour (needs more testing), so it's worth clustering them in groups of 4 to make it more efficient.
Babies
With a height of 0.12 blocks, baby turtles are the smallest mobs in the game. 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.
The growth of baby turtles can be accelerated using seagrass. Each use reduces the growth duration by 10%, as well as slowly increasing their size by about .01 of a block. Upon becoming an adult, the turtle drops a scute.
Sounds
{{Sound table}}.
Examples can be seen at Bee#Sounds and Ladder#Sounds.
The wikicode should be laid out neatly as in these examples for improved readability.
Remember to include a foot parameter so the table appears in the correct place. Do NOT convert the table using Visual Editor.
| Sound | Subtitle | Namespaced ID | Subtitle ID | Source | Pitch | Volume | Attenuation distance |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Turtle chirps | entity.turtle.ambient_land
|
subtitles.entity.turtle.ambient_land
|
? | ? | 1, 3 = 0.8; 2 = 0.7 | 16 | |
| Turtle dies | entity.turtle.death
|
subtitles.entity.turtle.death
|
? | ? | ? | 16 | |
| Turtle baby dies | entity.turtle.death_baby
|
subtitles.entity.turtle.death_baby
|
? | ? | ? | 16 | |
| Turtle hurts | entity.turtle.hurt
|
subtitles.entity.turtle.hurt
|
? | ? | ? | 16 | |
| Turtle baby hurts | entity.turtle.hurt_baby
|
subtitles.entity.turtle.hurt_baby
|
? | ? | ? | 16 | |
| Turtle lays egg | entity.turtle.lay_egg
|
subtitles.entity.turtle.lay_egg
|
? | ? | ? | 16 | |
| Turtle swims | entity.turtle.swim
|
subtitles.entity.turtle.swim
|
? | ? | ? | 16 | |
| Turtle shambles | entity.turtle.shamble
|
subtitles.entity.turtle.shamble
|
? | ? | ? | 16 | |
| Turtle baby shambles | entity.turtle.shamble_baby
|
subtitles.entity.turtle.shamble_baby
|
? | ? | ? | 16 |
Data values
Turtles have entity data associated with them that contain various properties of the mob.
- 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
![]() | The Parrots and the Bats | Breed two animals together | Husbandry | Breed a pair of any of these 25 mobs:
| husbandry/breed_an_animal
|
![]() | Two by Two | Breed all the animals! | The Parrots and the Bats | Breed a pair of each of these 24 mobs:
| husbandry/bred_all_animals
|
History
| 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. | ||||
| Java Edition | |||||
| 1.13 | 18w07a | ||||
| 18w07b | Turtles are now bred using seagrass, instead of raw cod. | ||||
| 18w11a | Added drowned, which attack baby turtles. | ||||
| 1.14 | 18w44a | Added stray cats, which attack baby turtles. | |||
| 19w07a | Added foxes, which attack baby turtles. | ||||
| 1.15 | 19w39a | ||||
| 19w40a | The turtle models have been fixed.[3] | ||||
| Bedrock Edition | |||||
| 1.5.0 | beta 1.5.0.4 | ||||
| 1.8.0 | beta 1.8.0.8 | Added stray cats, which attack baby turtles. | |||
| 1.13.0 | beta 1.13.0.1 | Added foxes, which attack baby turtles. | |||
| Legacy Console Edition | |||||
| TU69 | 1.76 | Patch 38 | |||
Issues
Issues relating to "Turtle" are maintained on the bug tracker. Report issues there.
Gallery
A baby turtle moving on the beach after being hatched.
A turtle swimming in a small pool of water.
A skeleton attacking a baby turtle.
A wolf attacking a group of baby turtles.
Two turtles mating.
- Turtle and Baby Turtle.png
A baby turtle on top of the head of an adult.
Two turtles with some turtle eggs.
A turtle picked up by a boat.
A large number of turtles in an artificial lake.
Official Artwork
- Update Aquatic.jpeg
Turtles as seen in the Update Aquatic artwork.

















