Behavior and appearance[]
Wolves exhibit three different states depending on how the user interacts with them:
- Wild wolves have gray fur, a drooping tail, and their eyes consist of two white pixels and two black pupils. They are neutral towards the player. They attack rabbits, foxes, skeletons and their variants, llamas, sheep, and baby turtles without provocation. They may run away when spat upon by llamas, depending on the strength of the llama. They do not despawn.
- Angry wolves have a constant growling and fearsome appearance. Their tail becomes straight, their eyes become red and the contrast level of the fur increases, revealing dark patches of bristling hair and a mouth line raised in a slight snarl. Angry wolves are hostile only towards mobs that attack them. They can see attackers even if they are invisible. Angry wolves cannot be leashed, but a wild wolf may become angry while it is still leashed without dropping the lead.
- Tamed wolves have friendlier looking eyes. They have a red collar around their neck, which can be dyed using any color of dye on the wolf. Pressing use on the wolf makes it sit and remain in place and not follow the player around. Tamed wolves attack players or mobs that injure their owner, unless the target has the same owner or is on the same team. Standing wolves attack players or mobs that are attacked by their owner, unless the target has the same owner or is on the same team. They do not attack creepers, ghasts, or tamed horses regardless of owner. Standing tamed wolves attack skeletons and their variants without provocation, but not sheep, baby turtles, passive rabbits, or foxes.
A wolf becomes hostile towards a player or other mob that attacks it, unless the attacker is the wolf's owner or is otherwise on the same team, and also causes wild wolves and standing tamed wolves in a 33×33×21 cuboid centered on the attacked wolf to become hostile towards the attacker.
Skeletons and their variants, foxes, baby turtles, and passive rabbits actively avoid wolves. Killer rabbits[JE only] attack wolves. Sheep ignore wolves other than their random running after being damaged.
The behavior of puppies is the same as tamed wolves. Puppies have larger heads, similar to other animal babies.
Wolves are 0.85 blocks tall, and baby wolves are 0.425 blocks tall. The textures of the wolves are tinted dark gray once submerged.
Movement[]
Standing tamed wolves wander randomly when near their owner, but follow if more than 10 blocks away, and teleport to a nearby free block (if any) if more than 12 blocks away. Besides making travel easier, teleporting can be used to rescue them from lava, water or pits.
- Wolves can be told to "sit" by pressing use on them, and made to stand again with another press of use.
- A wolf sits when first tamed.
- While sitting, they do not follow the player. However, if their owner fights a mob near them, they are still likely to join the fight. When the fight is over, they go back to sitting (if in water, they won't sit until they are on dry land). They sit at their new location instead of returning to wherever they were previously.
- Wolves stand up and follow the player if pushed into water or injured while sitting.
- Wolves find paths to their targets if attacking, even in craters. They also navigate along the edges of cliffs, but occasionally take drops long enough to damage them.
- Wolves attack their targets running at player's walking speed and by leaping at them in exactly the same manner as spiders, but differently cause no damage while in midair. Tamed wolves attack any animal the player starts to attack. They also can navigate and turn around in 1 × 1 horizontal tunnels.
- After emerging from the water, a wolf shakes the water off their fur.
Tamed wolves shiver during rain if they are not covered by a roof.
Teleportation[]
Tamed wolves teleport to their owner, if they are more than 12 blocks away, with a few caveats.
- Teleporting resets the focus of a tamed wolf, so if a wolf is attacking a mob and teleports beside a player, it resumes following the player.
- It is possible for tamed wolves to teleport to an inaccessible location (e.g. under ice) and be injured or die of suffocation as a result.
A wolf does not teleport:
- If the wolf has been ordered to sit.[2]
- Exception: The wolf is likely to teleport if it is injured while sitting (it no longer sits after teleporting). An example is if a wolf that is sitting is hit by another player, it teleports to their owner.
- Exception: If the wolf is in a loaded chunk, and the player gets damaged by a mob, there's a chance for the wolf to stop sitting, causing them to teleport if the player is far away, then attacking the player's attacker and sitting down afterwards.
- If the wolf is chasing after a skeleton. This can lead to wolves standing and jumping in one place, such as over a cavern, if a skeleton is near. The wolf teleports once the skeleton is killed.
- If the wolf is in a minecart.
- If the wolf has been attached to a fence post with a lead.
- If the wolf is in an unloaded chunk.
- If none of the blocks on the edge of a 5×5×1 region centered on the player are transparent blocks with a solid block below and another transparent block above.
- If the player is in another dimension; a wolf remains in its current dimension until the player returns. However, wolves can be transported to another dimension by pushing them into the portal first.
- If the owner is not directly touching the ground (e.g. using elytra, flying, in a boat).\
Taming, Health and feeding[]
A wolf can be tamed by feeding it bones. Once tamed, a wolf does not accept any more bones. Note that the number of bones required is random – each bone has a ⅓ chance of taming the wolf.[3] If the wolf is tamed, it receives a red collar and sits if not swimming. There is no limit[4] to the number of wolves the playercan tame, except in the Legacy Console Edition, the player can have up to 8 wolves[Xbox 360, PlayStation 3 and Wii U editions only], and up to 16 wolves in console editions[Xbox One, PlayStation 4 and Nintendo Switch editions only]. A wolf's tail rises and lowers depending on its health. The exact health of an individual wolf can be determined by measuring the angle between its hind legs and tail. The angle indicates the percentage of health that the wolf has. Tamed wolves whine when they have low health (below 10). Wild wolves have a maximum health of 8, so their tails always remain significantly lower than those of tamed wolves. Tamed wolves can be healed by feeding them any sort of meat other than fish; listed below, this restores as much of the wolf's health as the same food would restore hunger points when eaten by the player.
| Food | Heals | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Raw Chicken Cooked Chicken |
1 | Raw Chicken can be fed to wolves without making them get the Hunger status effect. |
| Raw Porkchop Cooked Porkchop |
2 | |
| Raw Beef Steak |
2 | |
| Rotten Flesh | 2 | Can be fed to wolves without making them get the Hunger status effect. |
| Raw Mutton Cooked Mutton |
2 | |
| Raw Rabbit Cooked Rabbit |
2 |
In Bedrock Edition, raw or cooked cod/salmon can also be used.
Puppies have only 8 health when born, but their maximum health is the same as an adult's - 20 × 10, and they can be raised to full health by feeding them any meat listed above or using splash potions of healing. Note that wolves do not get food poisoning, so they can freely eat rotten flesh or raw chicken. Feeding a tamed wolf which is already at full health usually starts the "love mode" animation.
A tamed wolf's collar color can be changed by using a dye on the wolf.
Breeding[]
Tamed wolves at full health can be bred with any type of meat, including rotten flesh and raw chicken without causing the Hunger effect.
The growth of baby wolves can be slowly accelerated using any type of meat. Each use takes 10% off the remaining time to grow up.
Breeding two wolves that recognize someone else as an owner causes the puppy to also be owned by the owner of the original two wolves. If two tamed wolves with different owners are bred, the owner of the puppy is the owner of the youngest wolf.
Achievements[]
| Icon | Achievement | In-game description | Actual requirements (if different) | Availability | Xbox points earned | Trophy type (PS) | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Xbox | PS | Bedrock | Nintendo | ||||||
| Leader Of The Pack | Befriend five Wolves. | This does not have to be in a single game, so multiple games or reloading old saves does count toward this achievement. | Xbox One | PS3 | Yes | Wii U, Switch | 20G | Silver | |
| Xbox 360 | PS4, PSVita | Alt | 30G | Bronze | |||||
Advancements[]
| Icon | Advancement | In-game description | Parent | Actual requirements (if different) | Internal ID | The Parrots and the Bats | Breed two animals together | Husbandry | — | minecraft:husbandry/breed_an_animal
| |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Best Friends Forever | Tame an animal | Husbandry | — | minecraft:husbandry/tame_an_animal
| |||||||
| Two by Two | Breed all the animals! | The Parrots and the Bats | Breed pairs of each of these 14 mobs. Other breedable mobs, if any, are ignored for the advancement. | minecraft:husbandry/bred_all_animals
|
History[]
| Java Edition Beta | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| March 2, 2011 | Notch confirmed the addition of wolves after having breakfast with an idol of his (likely Peter Molyneux). | ||||
| March 18, 2011 | Jeb posted a video preview of the wolves he was working on. | ||||
| 1.4 | Added wolves. | ||||
| A glitch was encountered where if the player's wolf was not sitting when the player logged off, it would become wild and the player would have to tame it again. This problem was fixed a couple of updates after wolves were first introduced. | |||||
| 1.5 | Prior to this update, wolves would continuously made whimpering noises, even when they were at full health in multiplayer because Jeb accidentally used client-side health instead of synced health.[5] Wolves no longer do this. | ||||
| 1.6 | ? | Players hurting themselves with arrows no longer cause all of their tamed wolves to attack them. | |||
| 1.8 | ? | Just like farm animals, wolves will now no longer despawn, and they now spawn rarely. | |||
| Most wolves will now generate with the world. | |||||
| Java Edition | |||||
| 1.1 | ? | Wolves will now despawn only when hostile; passive and tamed wolves do not. | |||
| 1.2.1 | 12w03a | Prior to this update, breeding wolves with wheat caused a bug which made them sit forever. This has now been fixed. | |||
| Wolves can now be bred through the use of any type of meat such as chicken (raw or cooked), pork (raw or cooked), beef (raw or cooked), and rotten flesh if tamed and at full health. | |||||
| 1.4.2 | 12w34a | Tamed wolves can now have dye-able collars.[6] | |||
| 1.4.5 | ? | Added baby untamed wolves, which can be spawned only in creative using a spawn egg. | |||
| 1.6.1 | ? | Passive untamed wolves now despawn, but only after at least two minutes. | |||
| 1.6.2 | ? | Wolves, along with zombies, creepers and skeletons, no longer turn hostile towards the player when attacked in creative mode. | |||
| 1.8 | 14w02a | Baby wolves growth can now be accelerated using raw or cooked chicken, raw or cooked porkchop, raw or cooked beef and rotten flesh. | |||
| 14w05b | Tamed wolf collars are now no longer visible when they have the Invisibility effect. | ||||
| 14w10a | Wolves (both wild and tamed) will now chase and attack both regular skeletons and wither skeletons. | ||||
| Tamed wolves named using a name tag will now display death messages to the owner. | |||||
| 14w18a | A tamed wolf's collar color will now default to orange rather than red.[7] | ||||
| 1.9 | 15w38a | All tamed wolves – even unnamed ones – now display death messages to their owner. | |||
| 15w39a | Wolves are now slightly taller (0.85 blocks tall rather than 0.8, with babies 0.425 blocks tall rather than 0.4). | ||||
| 15w46a | A tamed wolf's collar color will now once again default to red. | ||||
| 1.10 | 16w21a | Wild wolves will now no longer despawn. | |||
| 1.11 | 16w32a | The entity ID of wolves has now been from Wolf to wolf.
| |||
| 1.13 | 18w07a | Wild wolves will now attack baby turtles. | |||
| 1.14 | 19w07a | Wild wolves will now attack foxes. | |||
| 18w43a | The texture of wolves has now been changed. | ||||
| Pocket Edition Alpha | |||||
| 0.9.0 | build 1 | Added wolves. | |||
| build 2 | Wolves now have sounds. | ||||
| build 9 | Wolves will now have interact buttons at the bottom of the screen to tame and sit them. | ||||
| 0.11.0 | build 1 | Wolves' collars are now dyeable. | |||
| 0.12.1 | build 11 | Tamed wolves will now attack targets when hit with a bow. | |||
| 0.13.0 | build 1 | Wolves now naturally attack skeletons and rabbits. | |||
| 0.14.0 | build 1 | Baby zombie jockeys now check for nearby adult wolves to mount prior to attacking the player, villager, or golem. | |||
| 0.15.0 | build 1 | Baby husks can now mount wolves. | |||
| Wolves now attack strays. | |||||
| 0.16.0 | build 4 | Wolves now damage the player in peaceful difficulty.[verify] | |||
| Pocket Edition | |||||
| 1.1.0 | alpha 1.1.0.0 | Wolves now run away from llamas. | |||
| Bedrock Edition | |||||
| 1.5.0 | beta 1.5.0.4 | Wild wolves will now attack baby turtles. | |||
| Upcoming Bedrock Edition | |||||
| 1.13.0 | beta 1.13.0.1 | Wild wolves will now attack foxes. | |||
| Legacy Console Edition | |||||
| TU1 | CU1 | 1.0 | Patch 1 | Added wolves. | |
| TU14 | 1.04 | Tamed wolves can now have dyeable collars. | |||
| TU31 | CU19 | 1.22 | Patch 3 | A tamed wolf's collar color will now default to orange rather than red. | |
| The growth of baby wolves can now be accelerated using raw or cooked chicken, raw or cooked porkchop, raw or cooked beef and rotten flesh. | |||||
| New Nintendo 3DS Edition | |||||
| 0.1.0 | Added wolves. | ||||
Trivia[]
- Wolves were the first tameable mob added to Minecraft (added in Beta 1.4).
- If a tamed wolf is named with a name tag, its name is shown in the chat when killed.
- Wolves can teleport into transparent blocks.
- If the player attacks a wolf and then give the aggressive wolf food that it can eat (like rotten flesh), hearts appear as animals do when entering breeding mode, however the wolf does not breed and continues attacking the player.
- In singleplayer, if the player punches a wild wolf and leaves its field of vision, it stares at the player and does not move at all. Going back into its range causes it to continue pursuing the player.
- Aggressive wolves have the path-finding of most mobs, such as going around pits, but may sometimes try to jump to get a player that's separated by a 1–2 block gap. In two block gaps, they won't make the jump and fall, but may manage to damage the player.
- If the player kills their own tamed wolves, their wolves still drop experience.
- Untamed wolves use their hostile appearance when they are attacking sheep, skeletons, foxes or rabbits. They change back once the targeted mob dies or gets out of their range.
- Attacking a wild wolf on peaceful won't damage the player, but they assume the hostile appearance and try to push them, similar to a tiny slime.
- A wild baby wolf's head grows significantly when attacked.
- If the player attacks a wolf, but then moves a large distance away (e.g. 70 blocks), the wolf still appears hostile, but exhibits neutral behavior.[Java Edition only]
- Wolves that are tamed by the same player can accidentally attack each other while attacking another mob, leading to a fight.