Updated 25 October 2026. Facts on this page come from minecraft.wiki, minecraft.net and the live Artemis PvP server; sources are listed at the bottom.
Sniffers in Minecraft: Eggs and Ancient Seeds
The sniffer is an ancient mob that never spawns naturally: you hatch it from a sniffer egg, brushed from suspicious sand in warm ocean ruins. Sniffers sniff around and dig up torchflower seeds and pitcher pods from grass, dirt and moss, plants found nowhere else. Breed two with torchflower seeds and they drop a new egg.
How do you get a sniffer egg?
Brush suspicious sand in warm ocean ruins; see ocean ruins and archaeology. Place the egg and wait: it hatches faster on moss blocks. Breeding two sniffers with torchflower seeds also drops an egg.
What do sniffers dig up?
Torchflower seeds and pitcher pods, which grow into the torchflower and pitcher plant. A sniffer only digs on dirt, grass, moss and similar blocks, and not while leashed, in water or being tempted. It remembers its last 20 dig spots and will not dig them again, so give it plenty of ground. Torchflowers make orange dye and pitcher plants make cyan dye, and sniffers are how you find their seeds. Flowers: flowers.
How long do babies take to grow?
A baby, called a snifflet, takes 40 minutes (two in-game days) to grow up, twice as long as most babies, and it does not follow the adults. Feed it torchflower seeds to speed things up, and keep it fenced in so it does not wander off while it grows.
Other sniffer facts
- 14 health, slow and harmless.
- Added in Trails and Tales (1.20) after winning the 2022 mob vote; see mob vote history.
- On Bedrock, feeding torchflower seeds also heals it.
- Related: sniffers and camels.
Frequently asked questions
Where do you find sniffer eggs?
In suspicious sand in warm ocean ruins.
Sources
Every fact on this page was checked against these pages; the wording is ours.