[MC-9388] Baby mobs cannot swim Created: 08/Feb/13  Updated: 24/Jul/18  Resolved: 24/Sep/14

Status: Resolved
Project: Minecraft: Java Edition
Component/s: None
Affects Version/s: Snapshot 13w06a, Minecraft 1.5, Snapshot 13w11a, Minecraft 1.5.1, Snapshot 13w16b, Minecraft 1.5.2, Snapshot 13w17a, Snapshot 13w18b, Snapshot 13w18c, Snapshot 13w19a, Snapshot 13w21a, Snapshot 13w21b, Snapshot 13w22a, Snapshot 13w23a, Snapshot 13w23b, Snapshot 13w24a, Snapshot 13w24b, Snapshot 13w25a, Minecraft 1.6, Minecraft 1.6.1, Minecraft 1.6.2, Minecraft 13w36b, Minecraft 13w37a, Minecraft 13w37b, Minecraft 1.7.2, Minecraft 1.7.4, Minecraft 14w03b, Minecraft 14w05b, Minecraft 14w06b, Minecraft 14w07a, Minecraft 14w08a, Minecraft 1.7.5, Minecraft 14w21b, Minecraft 14w25b, Minecraft 14w26b, Minecraft 14w26c, Minecraft 14w30b
Fix Version/s: Minecraft 1.8

Type: Bug
Reporter: John A Dunne Assignee: Unassigned
Resolution: Fixed Votes: 107
Labels: None
Environment:

Windows 7 client


Attachments: PNG File 2014-07-24_22.36.57.png     PNG File 2014-07-24_22.45.22.png     PNG File 2018-07-24_08.16.58.png     PNG File 2018-07-24_08.27.11.png    
Issue Links:
Duplicate
is duplicated by MC-9492 Baby animals can't swim / drown Resolved
is duplicated by MC-9696 BABY CHICKENS DO NOT SWIM ONCE WALKING Resolved
is duplicated by MC-10283 Baby chickens unaffected by flowing w... Resolved
is duplicated by MC-12070 baby Chicken Resolved
is duplicated by MC-12556 Baby chickens drown Resolved
is duplicated by MC-12682 Sometimes, baby wolf and baby ocelot ... Resolved
is duplicated by MC-13186 Baby Wolves Resolved
is duplicated by MC-13298 Baby Animals Do Not Swim Resolved
is duplicated by MC-15180 Puppies cant swim Resolved
is duplicated by MC-16779 Baby chickens drowning Resolved
is duplicated by MC-17096 Baby Chickens Hitboxes seem to be too... Resolved
is duplicated by MC-18460 chickens drowning in water Resolved
is duplicated by MC-20428 Baby Chicken not behaving Resolved
is duplicated by MC-24938 Baby Chickens die in water in farm Resolved
is duplicated by MC-29330 baby animal bug Resolved
is duplicated by MC-30702 Baby wolves are not swimming Resolved
is duplicated by MC-30945 Baby chickens drown in water Resolved
is duplicated by MC-35124 Baby animals ignore water physics. Resolved
is duplicated by MC-56588 Baby Chickens spawned with normal egg... Resolved
is duplicated by MC-60946 Baby Rabits sink in water Resolved
is duplicated by MC-62141 Baby wolves ocelots and rabbits unaff... Resolved
Relates
relates to MC-31385 Baby chickens do not care about water... Resolved
CHK:
Confirmation Status: Confirmed
Game Mode: Survival

 Description   

Create a 1 block deep water filled area, surrounded by 2 block high walls, so chickens must swim. Throw chicken eggs agoinst wall and hatch a few chicks. They will swim for a short time, but will then drown. In earlier versions they would swim forever.



 Comments   
Comment by Kevin He [ 24/Jul/18 ]

Please reopen this!!! This is reappearing in 1.13. Though baby animals seems to float on water (They will try to get to the surface), they are just perfectly submerged a little bit below the surface and it is enough to drown them)

Edit: Just found out and created a similar but not identical issue in 1.13: MC-134755 I confused that with this issue.

Note: You may need to scroll horizontally to see the important part of these images

See 

and 

Adult mobs are not affected. It affects all baby mobs at all water depths

Comment by AHelper [ 21/Sep/14 ]

Confirmed proper behavior for all baby mobs; All babies correctly swim when standing on a block under water, unlike previous versions.

Comment by Orbic [ 20/Sep/14 ]

I think it is fixed in 1.8, but in my opinion it shouldn't of.. babies cant swim in real life.

Comment by Ethan "derdiggermunster" Gardener [ 03/Sep/14 ]

I've just seen a baby chicken float above the water. It bobbed up and down as normal, but barely touched the water itself. If this is because of the sticky motion I described in MC-70700, I can imagine a baby chicken could get stuck below the water's surface and drown.

Comment by AHelper [ 24/Jul/14 ]

Is that a baby wolf not swimming? If so, my fix above is still valid.

Question to all, since the hit box is too low to collide with the water, if you place fences (hit box extends into the above block) on the bottom of water, can someone confirm babies swim? This might work as a temp fix for some cases.

Comment by Jonathan Ho [ 24/Jul/14 ]

Even Iron Golems can't swim! That's obvious since iron is denser than water. They don't drown though. But they would be killed by bunch of creepers, skeletons and zombies if they go on land, so going under water is a better idea than going on land.

Comment by Jonathan Ho [ 24/Jul/14 ]

That is 14w30b when baby doggy Greg drowned because of the bug!!!!

Comment by Jonathan Ho [ 24/Jul/14 ]

Poor doggy Greg...

Comment by Sealbudsman [ 26/Jun/14 ]

14w26c, baby chickens float, but others (cows, pigs, villagers) do not.

Comment by Hartspoon [ 28/Feb/14 ]

Still affects 14w08a.

Comment by AHelper [ 19/Dec/13 ]

Please note that the fix for this does not remove resizing of the babies but instead fixes collision checking for the water. You will still be able to detect babies, but this bug is a side-effect of resized mobs, same with babies growing up inside of blocks and dieing.

Comment by Anthony Thyssen [ 19/Dec/13 ]

I wouldn't want this fixed! It makes a useful baby mob separator!

Comment by Stratagerm [ 24/Nov/13 ]

Confirmed in 1.7.2 baby chickens still drowning.

Comment by PTR_91 [ 08/Nov/13 ]

This may explain why I keep finding rotten flesh in a pond (baby zombies)

Comment by theonecynic [ 06/Oct/13 ]

Confirmed in 13w39b. On Mushroom island, breeding mooshrooms, two baby mooshrooms walked into the water, sank, and drowned.

Comment by Sebastiaan Chamberlain [ 02/Oct/13 ]

I found that if you spawn the chicks over flowing water, they will swim when they fall into it. However, if you remove the water or spawn them on dry land and then add flowing water, it will run over them without them swimming upward, causing them to drown.

Comment by Vrej [ 21/Sep/13 ]

Confirmed.

Comment by David Kirk [ 31/Jul/13 ]

Tested in 1.6.2 OS X. baby chickens die in ocean or flat water. Bug still exists.

Comment by Kevin Reid [ 10/Jul/13 ]

Tested in 1.6.2 with chickens. If I throw eggs into a 1-block-deep pool of water, they hatch and swim normally. On the other hand, if there are any areas without water (e.g. due to signs or the end of a water stream), the baby chickens will happily land on those dry blocks, then walk into the water like it isn't there (actually, gliding around strangely quickly) and eventually drown. This is consistent with what I observed in previous versions, but perhaps not exactly matching the description of this bug.

Comment by [Mod] Ezekiel (ezfe) [ 10/Jul/13 ]

Is this still a concern in the current Minecraft version? If so, please update the affected versions in order to best aid Mojang ensuring bugs are still valid in the latest releases/pre-releases.

Comment by Tom Le Mort [ 28/Jun/13 ]

Same issue on OSx.

Comment by Buzzaro [ 10/Jun/13 ]

Draven, your logic is flawed. first there isn't a "newborn" stage there's only "baby" and "adult". Secondly baby ducks (ducklings) love to swim, baby horses(foals) can swim across rivers, a baby cow(calf) can swim across lakes, baby pigs(piglets) love to swim, etc. Lastly, you can't use the excuse "well, it's not very realistic for yada yada yada" regarding anything in this game, When was the last time you've seen anyone punch a tree until it fell down? AND CHUCK NORRIS DOESN'T COUNT! (and Melih has a great example also)

Comment by Melih Yildirim [ 08/Jun/13 ]

If this isn't going to be a bug because it's unrealistic for baby animals to be able to swim, then "Minecraft" as a whole, needs to go under a huge change, dirt shouldn't float and should need support underneath, to begin with...

Comment by AHelper [ 07/Jun/13 ]

Do remember that babies swim so long that their BBox hits the water, which was defined expected behavior, and that this new behavior was added from a fix to a bug. For "sorting babies and adults", this bug is the byproduct of that.

Affects 13w23a. Confirmed the effect on baby ocelots and wolves as well.

Comment by Draven Mueller [ 07/Jun/13 ]

I don't think this should be a bug. A newborn animal isn't going to be able to swim very well. And this adds a mechanic that people can use in different ways. Like sorting babies and adults.

Comment by AHelper [ 27/May/13 ]

Confirmed in 13w21a and 13w21b

Comment by fake fakes [ 05/May/13 ]

Still in 13w18c

Comment by AHelper [ 26/Apr/13 ]

still in 13w17a

Comment by Joshua Smith [ 26/Mar/13 ]

Confirmed with baby cows.

Comment by AHelper [ 26/Mar/13 ]

The reason why chickens die when they grow up is that when they grow up, their hitbox returns to the unadjusted size, causing them to suddenly be inside a solid block. Because they are being pushed, they are shot into the block and suffocate. Placing transparent blocks should help.

Comment by Buzzaro [ 21/Mar/13 ]

Figuring out what causes an issue is the hardest part of debugging a program, since AHelper has figured out that the cause and have given them the solution to implement, the only delay is on Mojang side.

My chicken coop wasn't a "chicken/egg farm", it was fenced in 7x7 plot of land with a 1x3 pond centered along the back fence. I feed the chickens, they make babies and the baby chickens go play in the pond until they drown. Sure, I filled in the pond, but what would the chickens drink? I'll have ASPCA on my back because it's in a desert biome...

Comment by Alex Steele [ 20/Mar/13 ]

I like being able to make an egg farm with both redstone or water. Making it with just water makes it less likely too cause lag or bug out. Then later on you can upgrade it once you get more resources, so that it kills, cooks and sorts all the resources.

Comment by Moo [ 20/Mar/13 ]

With hoppers you should be able to make an even more "automatic" egg/chicken farm than before, and without having to use the ridiculous floating method. I say there's far more important bugs for them to look at.

Comment by Tenebrae [ 20/Mar/13 ]

Come guys lets make 20 accounts each and vote this up

Comment by [Mod] Torabi [ 20/Mar/13 ]

Well, they've said a few times that issues are addressed roughly by vote count, with issues with more votes getting higher priority. It looks like this issue is sitting around 70th place, sorting by votes.

Comment by Buzzaro [ 19/Mar/13 ]

Ok, who do I have to payoff to get this issued assigned to someone so it can get fixed?
<new>
I used the "Hopper fix" and it didn't work as you described. I made a 3x3 room with hoppers for the floor. I added adult chickens and thru eggs in but I could only ever have 4 adult chickens alive for an extended time. Something caused any extra to die, I found a feather and meat in the hopper but not what I would expect for the number of babies that should have grown into adults.

Comment by AHelper [ 19/Mar/13 ]

I was looking into this and was able to fix this bug. The problem is that Minecraft adjusts the bounding box for mobs when they are being checked if they are in water (shrinks the height). Because the babies' hitboxes are short, they are shrunk too much and fail.

Can't post the change made to the sources as it is against the ToS unless an exception can be made. However, I will describe the issue without using any code.

@Mojang: Babies have 0.5*parent height and chickens have height 0.7. MC checks for water collision using the mob's height - 0.4. Since the adjusted baby chicken height is -0.05, this will always fail when they are on the ground. Reducing 0.4 to 0.3 allows the chickens to swim.

Hopefully someone at Mojang will be able to fix this before the next update.

<edit> This bug is caused by MC-1524's solution.

Comment by Tenebrae [ 09/Mar/13 ]

@Alexander I found another way to make one, one that doesn't involve water at all

Just make a whole floor of hoppers, then make upward dispensers at the end, with top-half slabs on em to make space for the baby-chicken spawns from the eggs.

Then just attach a redstone clock to all four dispensers. The hoppers will lead all eggs to the dispensers, and they will keep spewing them out as long as the chickens lay eggs, occasionally spawning a chicken

But ye, I can confirm that the problem still exists.

Comment by Alexander Hammett [ 09/Mar/13 ]

Still exists in the Prerelease!! Noooo! No Auto Chicken farms with water in 1.5 Please update description

Comment by Breunor [ 03/Mar/13 ]

Having this issue with 13w07a as well, doesn't matter if the water is flowing or a static source block. Hatching a chicken into water causes it to drown.

Comment by Tenebrae [ 02/Mar/13 ]

Yeah, like they said ^^^

You spend all time making this cool grinder, only to find it that it'll suck due to these animal bugs, including the fact that baby chickens don't swim.....

Comment by Buzzaro [ 01/Mar/13 ]

I deleted my comical rant on the mysterious workings of how Mojang fixes their bugs. (it made me feel better just writing it out) but please seriously, please fix this issue ASAP. RJ is correct on how it sucks some energy out of game play. (Mojang) Please let us know what we can do to help you. Thanks...

Comment by Randal Jones [ 01/Mar/13 ]

Three bugs force the design of chicken and other animal farms in this version to be very different from those of the past: Animals living in and "leaking" through transparent blocks, dying because of solid blocks and babies dying in water. I am amazed that it seems these bugs are not assigned nor being addressed before the next release. These bugs are illogical and seriously detrimental to gameplay and they will break many currently working farms and complicate any new redstone designs that are attempted. Mojang--are you listening?

Comment by Buzzaro [ 28/Feb/13 ]

The part that drive me nuts the most is the baby chickens are drawn to the water to play, and aren't start enough to stop before they drown. As soon as I hatch one, it wonders over to the water and dies. (arg)

Comment by Tenebrae [ 25/Feb/13 ]

It's not that they don't swim, it's that they are totally 100% unaffected by flowing water, and I consider that as a bug.

Comment by Randal Jones [ 10/Feb/13 ]

Whether in the ocean or a one-block-deep pool, baby chickens die within a minute. Baby pigs and cows sink and die almost immediately in the ocean. Baby villagers survive to adulthood while bobbing in the ocean – animals should dos the same. [Notes from MC 9492]

I suggest checking to see if this is an unintended consequence of shrinking the hit boxes of the babies. Perhaps they share code for swimming and don't float high enough to breathe.

Comment by Moo [ 09/Feb/13 ]

In the real world, chickens wouldn't be able to swim forever, whether baby or adult

Comment by Owen Murray [ 09/Feb/13 ]

Confirmed - if this is intended it really sucks, in the real world chickens can reproduce without human intervention so WHY should the Minecraft masters want to ruin chicken farms

Comment by Meta [ 08/Feb/13 ]

I guess that is so that some automatic chicken farms are nerfed.

Comment by Anon Ymus [ 08/Feb/13 ]

Confirmed, but I don't know if this is intended.

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