Minecraft Wiki
Advertisement

Wolves are the deuteragonists in Minecraft. They are a type of neutral tameable animal mob that can spawn in the forest, ice plains, and taiga biomes, often near mountain biomes.


Behavior[]

Wolves are initially neutral, but if they are attacked, all of the wolves in the immediate area will become hostile towards the attacker. Their eyes will turn red, their tail raises, their mouth raises, and they will attack the player who attacked them. If all of the players leave the game in an SMP server, at their return, all hostile wolves will be passive. However, the hostile texture will remain, so they cannot be tamed.

A tamed wolf will only attack mobs (except creepers) that are attacking or were attacked by its owner while wild wolves will naturally attack sheep, rabbits, tamed wolves, foxes, llamas, witches, evokers, baby turtles, and skeletons. They sometimes kill each other. When a wolf takes damage, its tail will lower, and it will show its current health. Tamed wolves can be right-clicked to make them sit or stand. When sitting, they will stay in the same place unless their owner is attacked in which case they will instantly teleport to the owner. When standing, they will wander around within a certain range of their owner, and they will teleport to their owner if they get too far away. Like a canine would do in real life, a wolf will shake its body to dry off after coming in contact with water.

Taming, Feeding, and Breeding[]

(See full Taming and Breeding articles here.)

A player can tame a wolf by right-clicking (PC/Windows10), holding down the action button (Pocket Edition), or using the right trigger (Console Editions) while a bone is held in a player's hand. It could take anywhere from 1-6 bones before a wolf becomes tamed. Black particles will appear each time a player feeds the wolf a bone. When these turn to heart particles and a red collar appears around the wolf's neck, it has been tamed. This collar can be re-colored using dyes. Aggressive wolves cannot be tamed until they become neutral again. Taming a wolf in Pocket Edition can be very difficult, as players risk hitting the wolf and making it hostile. Be sure to hold the action button down on top of the wolf instead of "poking" it. Sometimes, it takes a few tries before they are finally tamed.

Wolves can be bred by feeding 2 adult wolves a piece of any type of raw meat (including rotten flesh). If a player holds a piece of meat (or a Bone, although a tamed wolf cannot be fed bones) within a certain range of a wolf, it will tilt its head and beg for it. A player can then feed it the meat to engage "Love Mode". Tamed wolves can be fed any type of meat to heal them, and while untamed wolves can be fed, only tamed wolves can be bred. When a wolf pup first appears it's at low health so it's probably best to feed them before taking them on an adventure. Wolf pups take 20 minutes to grow to an adult, so about 2 Minecraft days.

History[]

Wolves were introduced in the Beta 1.4 patch, but it was not until 1.1.0. that the breeding mechanic was added, and not until 1.4 that their collars could be dyed. Wolves existed in TU1 in Console editions and were added to Pocket Edition in 0.9.0.

Trivia[]

  • If a tamed wolf attacks a wild wolf, it will growl at its owner.
  • /summon wolf minecraft:entity_born gives you a dyeable wolf 
  • In previous versions, if a player shot an arrow straight up and hit themselves, a player's tamed wolf would attack them.
  • A lighting glitch may sometimes cause a wolf to turn all black when it is wet.
  • Unused wolf sounds, such as howling, can be found in the Minecraft source code.
  • Untamed puppies truly exist. They can be made if a player right-clicks on an untamed wolf with a wolf spawn egg in their hand. They may also be randomly generated in their respective biomes.
  • Tamed wolves will attack skeletons without being provoked.
  • There was once a glitch in Pocket Edition where wolves could die while touching a carpet. However, this was fixed in patch 0.12.3.
  • A wolf's eye shape will change when it is either provoked or tamed.
  • Wolves are one of only two mobs, the other being polar bears, that can exist in all three states: passive, neutral, or hostile.
    • The only way a Wolf can be passive is if the player tames the wolf and hits it, it will not attack you. However, this doesn't apply when other players hit it.
  • If a player takes out a wild wolf in one attack, all other wolves in the nearby area will NOT turn hostile, similar to zombie pigmen.
  • There is a rare glitch where when boating across a large body of water, the wolves (tamed) may not teleport to the player after. This is likely due to the chunk occupying the wolf unloading
  • If a wolf pup swims into water, it's likely to drown when the player leaves the area.
  • There is an incredibly rare glitch where, after a wolf dies, its body is frozen in the state where it is laying on its side. It can move while in this state, can deal damage, and is virtually indestructible.[citation needed]
  • Even if a player deflects an attack with a shield, the tamed wolf/wolves will kill the attacker.
  • If you feed a wolf rotten flesh or raw chicken, they won't get the hunger status effect.

Gallery[]

WolfNew

Click for full Wolf gallery.

Videos[]


Mobs in Minecraft
Passive Mobs
BatFace Bat OcelotFace Cat ChickenFace Chicken CowFace Cow
CodBody Fish (various) Link=Fox Fox Glow Squid Face Glow Squid HorseHead Horse
MooshroomFace Mooshroom BrownMooshroomFace Brown Mooshroom OcelotFace Ocelot ParrotFaceParrot
PigFace Pig Big-rabbit-face Rabbit SheepFace Sheep Snowgolemhead Snow Golem
Squidface Squid StriderFace Strider TurtleFaceTurtle Villagerhead Villager
WanderingTraderFace Wandering Trader
Neutral Mobs
AxolotlFace Axolotl BeeFace Bee DolphinHead Dolphin EndermanFace Enderman
GoatFace Goat Vg face Iron Golem Big-llama-face Llama Panda FaceZ Panda
PiglinFace Piglin PolarBearFace Polar Bear SpiderFace Spider CaveSpiderFace Cave Spider
BetterWolfFace Wolf ZombifiedPiglinFace Zombified Piglin
Hostile Mobs
Blaze Face Blaze CreeperFace Creeper Drownedheaad Drowned Enderdragon Face Ender Dragon
EndermiteFace Endermite EvokerFace Evoker Link=Evoker Fang Evoker Fang GhastFace Ghast
Link=Guardian Guardian Big-elder-guardian-face Elder Guardian Hoglin faceHoglin HuskFace Husk
Magma Cube Face Magma Cube PhantomFace Phantom PiglinBruteFace Piglin Brute PillagerFace Pillager
RavagerFace Ravager Big-shulker-face Shulker SilverfishFace Silverfish SkeletonFace Skeleton
SlimeFace Slime Spider SkeletonFace Spider Jockey StrayFace Stray VexFace Vex
VindicatorFace Vindicator Warden Face Warden 50px-WitchFace Witch Wither face Wither
WitherSkeletonHead Wither Skeleton Spider WitherSkeleton Wither Skeleton Jockey ZoglinFaceZoglin ZombieFace Zombie
ZombieVillagerFace Zombie Villager
Advertisement