The sniffer is one of Minecraft’s most charming mobs: a gentle, prehistoric creature that snuffles through the ground to dig up seeds for plants that no longer grow anywhere else in the world. There is no wild sniffer to tame and no spawn egg to find in survival. Every sniffer you own starts as a single egg buried in the ocean floor, and from that one egg you can build a whole herd. This guide walks through finding that first egg, hatching it, putting the adult to work sniffing, and breeding more so you never run out of ancient seeds.
The sniffer was added in Java Edition 1.20 and Bedrock Edition 1.20.0 as the winner of the Minecraft Live mob vote. It is a passive mob with 14 health points (7 hearts), it moves slowly, and it never attacks. Adults are large, taking up roughly 1.9 blocks of width, so they need open space to roam.
Finding a Sniffer Egg
Sniffer eggs are found by brushing suspicious sand in warm ocean ruins. This is the only naturally generated source. Warm ocean ruins generate in warm and lukewarm ocean biomes, and inside them you will find suspicious sand blocks that look almost identical to normal sand but have a faint cracked texture. You excavate them with a brush, holding right-click (or the use button) until the buried item pops out.
Not every suspicious sand block contains an egg. According to the Minecraft Wiki, a sniffer egg has roughly a 6.7% chance of being the item brushed out of warm ocean ruins suspicious sand, so you will sweep through plenty of pottery sherds, emeralds and other loot before one appears. Bring a few brushes, since they wear out, and a way to breathe underwater such as a turtle shell or a potion of Water Breathing. Unlike turtle eggs, you do not need Silk Touch to collect anything here, because the egg drops as a normal item rather than as a placed block.
Once you have a single egg, you never strictly need the ocean again, because two adult sniffers can produce more eggs through breeding. The dive is only required to bootstrap your first sniffer.
Hatching the Egg
The sniffer egg is placed like a block. It does not need a supporting block beneath it and it is unaffected by gravity, so it will float wherever you put it. As it incubates it passes through three visible stages: uncracked, slightly cracked, and very cracked, and shortly after the last stage it hatches into a baby sniffer (a “snifflet”).
The block you place the egg on controls how fast it hatches:
| Detail | Value |
|---|---|
| Egg source | Brushing suspicious sand in warm ocean ruins (~6.7% chance) or sniffer breeding |
| Hatch time on a moss block | 10 minutes |
| Hatch time on any other block | 20 minutes (including pale moss blocks) |
| Adult sniffer health | 14 HP (7 hearts) |
| Sniffing cooldown | 8 minutes between digs |
| Snifflet growth time | 48,000 ticks (~40 minutes / two in-game days) |
| Breeding cooldown | 5 minutes after producing an egg |
Placing the egg on a moss block roughly halves the wait, so it is worth crafting a moss block from a moss carpet or trading for one before you settle in to incubate. In Java Edition the hatching speed is not affected by the randomTickSpeed game rule, so commands that speed up crop growth will not rush your egg.
Raising the Snifflet
A freshly hatched snifflet is a small, slow baby that cannot sniff yet. It needs 48,000 game ticks to grow up, which is about 40 minutes of real time or two full in-game days. You can speed this along by feeding it torchflower seeds; each seed reduces the remaining growth time by about 10%. Snifflets drop nothing if they die, so keep them fenced away from cliffs, lava and hostile mobs while they grow.
Sniffing for Ancient Seeds
Once it is an adult, the sniffer does its signature job: it wanders around, sniffs at the air, then lowers its nose and digs up an ancient seed. It will only dig on a specific set of natural blocks, including dirt, grass block, coarse dirt, rooted dirt, podzol, moss block, pale moss block, mud and muddy mangrove roots. It will not dig on stone, sand, paths or other surfaces, so build it a roaming pen out of one of those valid blocks.
When it digs, the sniffer produces either torchflower seeds or a pitcher pod, with equal probability between the two. After each successful dig it enters an eight-minute cooldown before it can search again, so a single sniffer is a slow trickle of seeds. The fastest way to get more is to run several adults at once.
Growing Torchflowers and Pitcher Plants
The two seeds grow into the only plants the sniffer can dig up. Torchflower seeds are planted on farmland and grow into a torchflower, a glowing orange ancient flower. Torchflowers can be crafted into orange dye, brewed into a suspicious stew that grants brief Night Vision, and used to breed, grow and lead bees.
The pitcher pod is planted on farmland and similar fertile blocks, where it grows through a pitcher crop stage into a full two-block-tall pitcher plant. A harvested pitcher plant crafts into two cyan dye, bees treat player-placed pitcher plants as flowers, and the plant can be composted. Both flowers are otherwise decorative collectibles, prized mainly because the sniffer is the only way to obtain them.
Breeding Two Adult Sniffers
Breeding lets you turn one ocean find into an endless supply. Feed torchflower seeds to two adult sniffers and they enter love mode. Instead of producing a baby directly like most mobs, the pair drops a sniffer egg as an item on the ground, which you then place and hatch like the one you brushed out of the ruins. After breeding, each sniffer goes on a five-minute cooldown before it can breed again.
This creates a tidy self-sustaining loop: sniffers dig up torchflower seeds, you grow a torchflower patch from some of them and feed the rest back to your adults to breed more eggs, and every new sniffer adds another digger to the rotation. Pen them on a valid sniffing block in a fenced field and the herd will quietly farm ancient seeds for you while you do other things.
Frequently Asked Questions
Where do I find a sniffer egg?
Brush suspicious sand inside warm ocean ruins. The sniffer egg has roughly a 6.7% chance to be the item you brush out, so expect to sweep several blocks before one appears.
How long does a sniffer egg take to hatch?
About 10 minutes when the egg is placed on a moss block, or 20 minutes on any other block (including pale moss blocks). The egg passes through three cracking stages before it hatches into a baby sniffer.
What do sniffers dig up?
They dig torchflower seeds or pitcher pods with equal probability, only on valid blocks such as dirt, grass, moss, mud and podzol. After each dig the sniffer waits out an eight-minute cooldown.
Sniffer farms are far more fun with friends taking turns brushing ruins and tending the breeding pen, and you can keep the whole herd running around the clock on a always-on Minecraft server for you and your friends. If you want help getting set up, our Minecraft server documentation covers configuration step by step.
Want more creature and exploration guides? Try our Minecraft Frogs & Froglights Guide: Breeding and Colours, our Minecraft Allay Guide: How to Find, Duplicate and Use Allays, and our Minecraft Trial Chambers Guide: Loot, Trial Spawners & Keys.
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