How to Find a Sniffer in Minecraft (Egg, Hatching & Breeding Guide)

TL;DR

• Sniffers do not spawn naturally — you must find and hatch their eggs.
• Sniffer eggs are found by brushing suspicious sand in warm ocean ruins.
• Each suspicious sand block has a 6.7% chance of dropping a sniffer egg.
• Place the egg on a moss block to hatch it in 10 minutes instead of 20.
• Baby sniffers (snifflets) take 40 minutes to grow into adults.
• Breed two adult sniffers with torchflower seeds to get more eggs.
• Sniffers dig up torchflower seeds and pitcher pods — the only way to get these plants.

How to find a sniffer in Minecraft is one of the more unique challenges in the game. Unlike most mobs, sniffers do not wander around your world. They are an ancient, extinct mob — meaning the only way to get one is to track down their eggs and hatch them yourself. This guide covers everything you need to know: where to find the egg, how to hatch it fast, how to breed sniffers, and what these giant prehistoric creatures actually do for you. You can play Minecraft on Java or Bedrock and the sniffer works the same way on both.

What Is a Sniffer in Minecraft?

The sniffer is a large passive mob added in the 1.20 Trails and Tales update. It won the Minecraft Live 2022 mob vote and was introduced as an extinct prehistoric creature. Because it is classified as extinct, it never spawns on its own in any biome. You have to bring it back yourself by finding its egg.

Adult sniffers are enormous. They stand about 1.75 blocks tall and nearly 2 blocks wide. Despite their size, they are completely harmless. They will not attack you — not even if you hit them first. They have 14 health points (7 hearts) and wander around slowly, sniffing the ground for buried seeds.

how to find a sniffer in minecraft

How to Find a Sniffer in Minecraft

You cannot find a sniffer walking around in the wild. The only way to get a sniffer is to find a sniffer egg, hatch it, and wait for it to grow. There are two ways to get a sniffer egg:

• Brush suspicious sand in warm ocean ruins (the first method, and the only one available early game)
• Breed two adult sniffers using torchflower seeds (requires you to already have two sniffers from the first method)

Step 1 — Craft a Brush

Before you go looking for sniffer eggs, you need a brush. This is a tool used in Minecraft’s archaeology system. Without it, you cannot excavate suspicious sand blocks. The recipe is simple:

• 1 Feather (top slot)
• 1 Copper Ingot (middle slot)
• 1 Stick (bottom slot)

Place them in a vertical line in your crafting table. Feathers come from chickens, copper ingots are smelted from copper ore found underground, and sticks are made from wooden planks. Once you have your brush, you are ready to go.

Step 2 — Find Warm Ocean Ruins

Sniffer eggs are found inside warm ocean ruins. These are underwater structures that generate in warm and lukewarm ocean biomes. Warm oceans are easy to spot — they have clear, bright blue water and are often filled with coral reefs and tropical fish. They tend to generate next to warm land biomes like deserts and badlands.

Warm ocean ruins look like small stone or sandstone huts scattered on the ocean floor. They come in small variants (about 70% of spawns, one to two huts) and large variants (about 30%, several huts clustered together). The larger ones give you more suspicious sand to brush, which means better odds of finding an egg.

Do not confuse warm ocean ruins with cold ocean ruins. Cold ocean ruins are made of stone and cobblestone. Warm ocean ruins are made of sand-type blocks. The building material is the easiest way to tell them apart at a glance.

To survive underwater while searching, consider brewing a Water Breathing potion before you dive. It makes exploring ocean ruins much more comfortable. A Night Vision potion also helps you spot suspicious sand blocks on the dark ocean floor.

Step 3 — Find and Brush Suspicious Sand

Inside warm ocean ruins, you will find suspicious sand. It looks almost identical to normal sand, but has a faint cracked or speckled texture. Look carefully — it is easy to miss at first. Do not break it with a shovel or let it fall. If you break suspicious sand the wrong way, it drops nothing and the contents are lost forever.

To excavate it correctly, hold your brush in your hand and hold right-click (Java) or the use button (Bedrock) on the suspicious sand block. A brushing animation plays and the item inside slowly appears. Each block has a 6.7% chance of containing a sniffer egg. That means you will likely need to brush quite a few blocks before one appears. Do not get discouraged — just keep moving through ruins and brushing every suspicious block you find.

Other items you can brush out include pottery sherds, emeralds, and wheat. If an item other than a sniffer egg pops out, move on to the next block. The block does not refresh, so there is no point in re-brushing it.

Try to collect at least two sniffer eggs on your first trip. This way, you can hatch two sniffers and start breeding them without making a second ocean trip.

Step 4 — Hatch the Sniffer Egg

Once you have a sniffer egg, bring it back to your base and place it on the ground. The egg will slowly crack over time and hatch into a baby sniffer called a snifflet. Here is how long it takes:

• On any regular block: about 20 minutes
• On a moss block: about 10 minutes

The egg goes through three visible cracking stages before it hatches. Keep in mind that you need to stay within 128 blocks of the egg for the timer to count down. If you wander too far away, the hatching pauses.

Moss blocks are found naturally in lush caves underground. Using one cuts the hatching time in half, which makes it well worth hunting one down. Place your egg on a moss block and wait.

You can mine a sniffer egg with any tool — even your bare hands — and it will always drop itself. You do not need Silk Touch. Check out our guide on how to get Silk Touch in Minecraft if you want this enchantment for other purposes.

Step 5 — Raise the Snifflet into an Adult

When the egg hatches, you get a snifflet — the baby version of the sniffer. Snifflets cannot sniff or dig yet. They need time to grow. A snifflet takes about 40 minutes of real time (two full in-game days) to become an adult sniffer.

You can speed up growth by feeding the snifflet torchflower seeds. Each seed reduces the remaining growth time by 10%. So if you have 10 seeds, you can skip the wait entirely. Keep your snifflet safe while it grows — fence it in away from lava, cliffs, and hostile mobs, since snifflets cannot defend themselves and drop nothing if they die.

How to Breed Sniffers in Minecraft

Once you have two adult sniffers, you can breed them to get more sniffer eggs without ever going back to the ocean. Feed torchflower seeds to two adult sniffers and they will enter love mode. Unlike most mobs, they do not produce a baby directly. Instead, one of them drops a sniffer egg as an item on the ground, which you then pick up, place, and hatch like before.

After breeding, there is a 5-minute cooldown before the pair can breed again. Torchflower seeds can be found by letting your adult sniffers dig — they produce these seeds themselves, so once you have a pair of adults, the whole system becomes self-sustaining.

What Does the Sniffer Do?

Digging Up Ancient Seeds

The main job of the sniffer is to sniff around and dig up rare ancient seeds. It wanders slowly, raises its nose to sniff the air, then lowers its head and digs into the ground. Each dig produces one of two items:

• Torchflower Seeds
• Pitcher Pods

The sniffer has an equal chance of digging up either one. After each successful dig, there is an 8-minute cooldown before it can dig again. These are the only mobs in the game that can produce these seeds. You cannot find torchflower seeds or pitcher pods anywhere else in vanilla Minecraft.

What Blocks Can a Sniffer Dig On?

Sniffers will only dig on certain natural blocks. Make sure your sniffer pen is built using one of these:

• Dirt
• Grass Block
• Coarse Dirt
• Rooted Dirt
• Podzol
• Moss Block
• Pale Moss Block
• Mud
• Muddy Mangrove Roots

Sniffers will not dig on stone, sand, paths, or wooden floors. Build your enclosure on dirt or grass to get the most out of them. Also note that sniffers remember their last 20 dig spots and will not dig in the same location twice, so a larger pen produces more seeds over time. A 20×20 or bigger grass pen works great for one or two sniffers.

What Are Torchflowers and Pitcher Plants Used For?

Both plants grown from sniffer seeds are decorative and also have some practical uses:

• Torchflower — Grows from torchflower seeds planted on farmland. Produces a glowing orange flower. Can be crafted into orange dye. Can be brewed into a suspicious stew that grants brief Night Vision. Also used to breed, grow, and lead bees.
• Pitcher Plant — Grows from pitcher pods planted on farmland. Takes several stages to reach full height. A tall, striking two-block decorative plant used for building and decoration.

Importantly, harvesting a mature torchflower or pitcher plant does not drop seeds. You get the flower, not the seed. The sniffer is the only renewable source of both seeds, which makes keeping a small herd very worthwhile for large farms or decorative builds. If you enjoy building elaborate farms, also check out our guide on how to make a bee farm in Minecraft since torchflowers interact with bees.

Sniffer Tips and Facts

• Cannot be tamed or ridden — You cannot tame a sniffer or ride one. You can attach a lead to move it around if needed.
• Completely passive — The sniffer will never attack you, even if you hit it.
• 7 hearts of health — Sniffers have 14 health points. They can take damage from mobs, lava, and falls, so protect them.
• Pandas also like cake — Sniffers have nothing to do with pandas, but if you are looking for more food tips, check out our Minecraft cake recipe guide.
• Cannot dig while leashed, in water, or panicking — Keep your sniffer calm and on dry land for best results.
• More sniffers = more seeds — Since each sniffer has an 8-minute cooldown per dig, running multiple sniffers in the same pen dramatically increases your seed output.
• Stay within 128 blocks — Both egg hatching and sniffer digging require you to be nearby. Build your enclosure close to where you spend most of your time.

How to Find Warm Ocean Ruins Fast

Finding warm ocean ruins quickly is the biggest challenge in getting your first sniffer. Here are some practical tips:

• Look for warm ocean biomes adjacent to deserts or badlands on your map — they commonly generate side by side.
• Use a boat to travel across the ocean surface and look down into the water for hut-shaped structures below.
• Use the /locate structure minecraft:ocean_ruin_warm command (if cheats are enabled) to find the nearest one instantly.
• In Bedrock, check buried treasure maps from shipwrecks — they often lead you into ocean areas where ruins also generate nearby.
• Bring a Water Breathing potion and a Night Vision potion to make ocean exploration much easier.

If you want to prepare well for ocean exploration, consider getting the best armor enchantments such as Respiration and Depth Strider before you dive in.

Sniffer vs Other Passive Mobs

The sniffer is in a class of its own among passive mobs. Here is how it compares to a few others:

• Cow — Gives milk and leather. Easy to find and breed. No unique loot.
• Bee — Pollinates crops and gives honeycomb. Useful for farms. Read our honeycomb guide for more.
• Sniffer — Digs up exclusive ancient seeds. The only source of torchflowers and pitcher plants. Hard to get but self-sustaining once you have a pair.

Frequently Asked Questions

Wrapping up

Finding a sniffer in Minecraft takes a bit of effort, but it is well worth it. The journey starts with crafting a brush and diving into warm ocean ruins to excavate suspicious sand. Once you have two eggs, hatch them on moss blocks to cut the wait time in half, raise the snifflets to adulthood, and set up a breeding pair. From that point on, your sniffer farm becomes fully self-sustaining — producing rare torchflower seeds and pitcher pods that you simply cannot get any other way.

If you enjoy exploration and setting up systems like this, there is a lot more to discover. Check out our guide on how to find an ancient city in Minecraft for another exciting underground adventure, or head into the Nether to take on its many challenges. You can also get Minecraft on Android or Xbox to start your sniffer adventure today.