Tadpole

Overview

A Tadpole is a twenty-minute timer with a hitbox, and the timer is the mechanic. It drops nothing, gives no experience, has 6 health, and swims in place doing very little — but the biome it is sitting in when it matures decides which of the three frog variants it becomes, and that decides which froglight colour you can produce. Warm biomes such as deserts, savannas and jungles give the warm frog and pearlescent froglights; snowy biomes give the cold frog and verdant froglights; everywhere else gives the temperate frog and ochre. Crucially it is where the Tadpole grows up, not where it hatched, so the standard technique is to breed frogs in a swamp, catch the tadpoles in a water bucket, and carry them to whichever biome produces the colour you want. Tadpoles hatch from frogspawn, which a bred Frog lays on a block of shallow water; they suffocate on land like a fish, and axolotls hunt them, so the nursery needs to be enclosed and axolotl-free. A bucketed Tadpole travels safely and does not despawn. Nothing else in the game lets you choose a mob's variant after it exists.

Choosing a frog variant, and through it a froglight colour. Carry a bucketed Tadpole to a desert, a snowy biome or a temperate one and it matures into the matching frog.

Tadpoles swim in place, drop nothing, and exist only to become frogs after about twenty minutes. The variant of frog they become is decided by the biome temperature where they grow up, not where they hatched, so moving a bucket of tadpoles to a snowy or desert biome is how you obtain cold and warm frogs and their matching froglights. They suffocate on land and are eaten by axolotls.

Tadpole is a passive mob in Minecraft Java Edition 1.21.4. You will need to deal 6 damage — 3 hearts — to kill one. Killing one gives no XP at all.

Properties

Tadpole has 6 health, which is 3 hearts. It drops no experience when a player kills it. Its hitbox is 0.4 blocks wide and 0.3 tall, which is what decides whether it fits through a gap or a one-block-high opening.

Spawns in

Not a world spawn. Hatches from frogspawn laid by breeding frogs on shallow water.

It is restricted to Swamp and Mangrove Swamp, so it will never turn up outside those biomes however dark it gets.

Dimension

Overworld

Biomes

Swamp, Mangrove Swamp

Added in

1.19

Dimension: Overworld · Added in 1.19

How it behaves

The Tadpole never attacks. The only reason to be careful around one is that killing it is often not what you want: breeding it is worth more than the drop.

It drops no experience however it dies, so there is nothing to farm here.

Command

In a world with cheats on, this spawns one Tadpole where you are standing.

Guides and tools that cover this

• GuidesHow to Fight Every Hostile Mob in Minecraft→
• GuidesHow to Build a Base That Mobs Cannot Enter→

Frequently asked questions

Related pages

AllayArmadilloAxolotlBatCamelChickenCodCow

How to get it

Tadpoles hatch from frogspawn laid on shallow water after breeding 2 frogs with slime balls. They take roughly 20 minutes to mature, and a water bucket moves them between biomes without harm.

Tips

• Bucket the tadpoles and move them before they mature — the biome at maturity decides the variant, not the hatching site.
• Enclose the nursery, because axolotls hunt tadpoles and a single one will empty a pond.
• Allow about 20 minutes per Tadpole, and keep the water at least one block deep the whole time.
• Breed frogs on shallow water: frogspawn can only be laid on a water surface, not in a deep pool.