Minecraft Wiki

The Minecraft Wiki has moved from Fandom; see the linked discussion page for details.

READ MORE

Minecraft Wiki
Advertisement

This article is about the mob. For the wearable armor like item, see Turtle Shell.

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:

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

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 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

The following sounds section uses an outdated format and should be redone using {{Sound table}}. 
You can help by converting the contents of this section into a sound table template.
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

See also: Chunk format

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
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, 2017Turtle (pre-release) Turtle mobs were announced at Minecraft.net.
Java Edition
1.1318w07aTurtle Turtle Added turtles and baby turtles.
18w07bTurtles are now bred using seagrass, instead of raw cod.
18w11aAdded drowned, which attack baby turtles.
1.1418w44aAdded stray cats, which attack baby turtles.
19w07aAdded foxes, which attack baby turtles.
1.1519w39aTurtle 19w39a Baby Turtle 19w39a Due to a bug, the baby turtle and turtle models are currently broken.
19w40aThe turtle models have been fixed.[3]
Bedrock Edition
1.5.0beta 1.5.0.4Turtle Turtle Added turtles (named sea turtles) and baby turtles.
1.8.0beta 1.8.0.8Added stray cats, which attack baby turtles.
1.13.0beta 1.13.0.1Added foxes, which attack baby turtles.
Legacy Console Edition
TU69 1.76 Patch 38Turtle Turtle Added sea turtles and baby sea turtles.

Issues

Issues relating to "Turtle" are maintained on the bug tracker. Report issues there.

Gallery

Official Artwork

References

  1. 125562 resolved as "Works as Intended"
  2. MC-125629 resolved as "Works as Intended"
  3. MC-161858
Advertisement