Taking Inventory: Bone

Quick! What’s the longest bone in the human body? It’s not the spine (that’s made of lots of little bones). Or the hips. It’s actually the femur - the thigh bone, which also happens to be the  strongest bone in the human body. But we’re here to talk about Minecraft bones, which happen to be our item of the week, so let’s get cracking. 

Bones became a part of Minecraft in 2011 in beta version 1.2, alongside spruce, birch, cake, and lapis lazuli. Skeletons had been in the game for about a year and a half by that point, but they only dropped arrows. 

For quite a while, killing skeletons was the only way to get bones. But in Java edition 1.3.1 they begun to be found in desert temples, allowing them to be acquired on peaceful difficulty. Today, you can also find them in various treasure chests and also when fishing.

There are three handy things you can do with a bone. The first is to craft it into bonemeal, which can be used to feed crops to make them grow faster. Maybe that’s why it’s called a “meal”. One bone gets you three piles of bonemeal.

The second is to tame a wolf. Eek! Using a bone on a wild wolf will give you a one-in-three chance of taming it, while using a bone on a hostile wolf will give you a zero-in-three chance of taming it, and a high risk of serious injury. You have been warned. 

The third is to get the attention of a wolf that’s been trained already. Wave it in their general direction and you can bet that they’ll come running. Yum! 

The SECRET FOURTH thing you can do with a bone is wear it as a helmet. What? Use console commands to equip a bone in the head armour slot and see what happens!

Bones in the real world behave much like they do in Minecraft. They drop occasionally from skeletons, dogs find them tasty, and they can be ground down to make fertilizer for plants. It’s almost as if we loosely based Minecraft on real life or something.

Here’s a weird and creepy fact. Humans are born with more than 300 bones in their body, but adults only have about 212. What happens to the rest? Well, they fuse together during growth. Or they get quietly stolen by bone goblins in the night. One of those things is definitely 100% true.

You might have wondered what the point of bones is. Well, they do a bunch of useful stuff - firstly, they serve as an internal frame to support the body. Bones also protect our internal organs - the brain, heart and lungs are all hidden inside bony cavities.

But that’s not all! Bones also help us to hear - the ossicles are three small bones in the middle ear which are involved in transmitting sound to the brain. Bones are home to bone marrow, which produces blood cells. Oh, and bones are a store of minerals that the body needs - most notably calcium and phosphorous.

So there you have it. Without bones, we’d be unable to listen, make blood cells or store calcium. Don’t know about you, but those are my three favourite things to do. So thank you bones!