Mob Menagerie: Fox

What’s fast and cunning, sleepy and hungry, and comes in red or white? It’s our mob of the month, the fox. These cunning critters rank high in the list of Minecraft’s most adorable animals! Never mind that it's MY list – I'm sure you agree!

Foxes were first showcased at Minecon Earth 2018, and when taiga won the biome vote, they were added to the game in the Village & Pillage update a year later. Shy creatures of habit, they generally try to keep their distance from the player, much like ocelots do. They spawn in taiga, old growth taiga, snowy taiga, and grove biomes in groups of two to four. They also come in two variants – red and white – depending on whether their spawn biome is snowy or not.

Foxes generally spend their days asleep in a dark place. At night, though, they’ll wake up and roam the taiga, sometimes hunting other mobs – including chickens, rabbits, baby turtles, cod, salmon, and tropical fish. Some might try to locate a nearby village and steal chickens. They also screech at night – if you hear a loud, weird noise in the darkness, it’s probably a fox. Probably.

Adding to the cuteness factor, foxes are naturally curious and will quite often pick up items they find lying on the ground. There are two ways to get the item back –  the first way is to kill the fox. Sad face. But the much kinder way is to give it something else it likes to eat, like a sweet berry. If you’re lucky, it’ll drop the item and pick up the food instead. The story behind this mechanic is an interesting one, and best told by resident fox expert and Gameplay Designer, Cory Scheviak.

Breeding foxes is not easy, because of their tendency to run away from the player. If you can get hold of two foxes, though, and feed them either sweet berries or glow berries, then they’ll produce a baby fox – known as a kit. This newborn fox will be tame, not running away from you, though it’ll still follow adult foxes if they run away, so a lead can be helpful for keeping it nearby.