Dolphin

The dolphin is the best friend you never asked for in Minecraft’s oceans. It swims up to you uninvited, gives you a speed boost, and if you toss it a fish, it will literally guide you to buried treasure. Think of it as a hyperactive underwater golden retriever that happens to be made of blocks and has no concept of personal space.

Dolphins are neutral aquatic mobs that spawn in pods of 3 to 5 across most ocean biomes. They leap out of the water, chase dropped items for fun, and grant the Dolphin’s Grace status effect to any player who sprint-swims near them. They are one of the most useful passive encounters in the game — provided you do not accidentally punch one. Hit a single dolphin and the entire pod turns on you like a synchronized swim team with anger issues.

What makes dolphins genuinely interesting is that they need both air and water to survive. Leave them on land too long and they suffocate. Keep them underwater too long and they drown. They are the only mob in the game that manages to die from literally everything the ocean has to offer. Keeping one alive in a custom build requires more thought than most players expect.

Overview / Quick Stats

Appearance

The dolphin has a sleek, elongated body built from blocky geometry — it resembles a bottlenose dolphin that somebody built out of LEGO bricks. The main body is a dark grey on top with a lighter grey underbelly, and there is a noticeable dorsal fin on its back. The tail section tapers into a flat horizontal fluke, and the head features two small black eyes on the sides and a subtle snout.

Baby dolphins exist only in Bedrock Edition. They use the same model scaled down to 65% of the adult size and follow their parent around. There is no visual difference beyond the size — no proportional head, no cute factor. Just a smaller dolphin.

When swimming, dolphins animate with a smooth undulating motion, periodically leaping out of the water in an arc. On land, they flop around helplessly, which is both visually sad and mechanically accurate to their impending suffocation.

Behavior & AI

• Idle behavior: Dolphins swim in pods, occasionally leaping out of the water to breathe. They bob, dive, and generally look like they are having the time of their lives. They also chase after boats, which is charming until you realize they can get in the way.
• Dolphin’s Grace (Java Edition): Players who sprint-swim within a 9-block spherical radius of a dolphin receive the Dolphin’s Grace status effect for 5 seconds. The effect replenishes if the player stays within 15 blocks while continuing to sprint-swim. The dolphin follows the player as long as they keep sprint-swimming, effectively giving you a turbo boost for as long as you keep moving.
• Speed boost (Bedrock Edition): In Bedrock, dolphins provide the same swimming speed increase, but there is no named status effect — the speed bonus is applied directly without appearing in the effects list.
• Invisibility interaction: Players with Invisibility do not receive Dolphin’s Grace unless they already had it before becoming invisible, or they are wearing armor. So yes, sneaking past a dolphin naked and invisible means you get nothing.
• Item chasing (Java Edition): Dolphins are lured by dropped items floating in water. They knock items around and chase them like it is a game. This behavior is exclusive to Java Edition and can occasionally lead a dolphin to drown if it cannot path back to air while chasing an item.
• Aggro behavior: Hit one dolphin and the entire pod retaliates. They attack together, similar to wolves and zombified piglins. In Java Edition, they only go hostile if you fail to kill the dolphin in a single hit — one-shot kills do not trigger the pod. In Bedrock, any hit triggers group aggression. Hostile dolphins remain hostile even if you feed them fish afterward. Once you have made your choice, you live with it.
• Treasure finding: Feed a dolphin raw cod or raw salmon and it swims toward the nearest shipwreck, ocean ruins, or buried treasure — specifically toward the chest inside those structures. If you break the chest and feed the dolphin again, it finds the next one. This is your personal underwater treasure GPS.
• Breathing requirements: Dolphins need air. If they stay fully submerged for about 4 minutes (240 seconds / 4800 ticks), they begin drowning. They periodically leap out of the water to breathe. The Water Breathing effect prevents them from drowning.
• Land suffocation: If a dolphin is out of water in dry weather, it takes suffocation damage after 2 minutes and eventually dies. It takes no damage out of water during rain. On land, it actively pathfinds toward a body of water.
• Despawning: Dolphins continuously spawn and naturally despawn if no players are nearby, similar to squid. They are not persistent mobs — naming them with a name tag prevents despawning.
• Guardian avoidance: Dolphins actively avoid guardians and elder guardians. Smart move on their part.

Abilities, Attacks & Status Effects

• Attack type: Melee ram. The dolphin swims at the target and bumps into them. It is not elegant, but a full pod doing it at once adds up fast.
• Attack damage: 2 HP on Easy, 3 HP on Normal, 4 HP on Hard. Individually weak. Collectively annoying.
• Dolphin’s Grace effect (Java Edition): Grants massively increased swim speed. Sprint-swimming with Dolphin’s Grace is the fastest way to travel underwater without an elytra or riptide trident. The effect ID is minecraft:dolphins_grace.
• Impaling vulnerability (Java Edition): Because dolphins are classified as aquatic mobs, they take bonus damage from tridents enchanted with Impaling in Java Edition. One well-enchanted trident can delete a dolphin instantly.
• Immunity to drowning prevention: Water Breathing effect (from potions or commands) prevents dolphins from drowning if they are kept submerged.
• No shield interaction: Dolphin attacks do not disable shields and have no special knockback properties beyond the standard melee push.

Spawning

Interactions with Environment & Other Mobs

• Guardians and elder guardians: Dolphins actively avoid both types of guardians. They will pathfind away from ocean monuments, which means you will not see them casually swimming through guardian territory.
• Players: Dolphins follow sprint-swimming players, chase boats, and can be fed to trigger treasure-finding behavior. They are one of the most interactive passive encounters in the game.
• Leads: Dolphins can be towed with a lead. This is one of the few ways to reliably relocate them, though keeping them alive during transport is the real challenge.
• Boats and minecarts: Dolphins cannot ride boats, similar to squid and fish. They also cannot enter minecarts. If you are looking for a dolphin chauffeur service, the game says no.
• Lava: Dolphins take 4 damage per tick in lava, like most mobs. They will die almost instantly. There is no reason a dolphin should ever be near lava, but Minecraft finds a way.
• Waterlogged blocks: A dolphin sitting on a waterlogged bottom slab or chest with an air block above is prevented from drowning. This quirk is useful for building dolphin enclosures.

Drops & Loot

Player Uses & Farming

• Speed boost for ocean travel: The primary use of dolphins is the swimming speed boost. Sprint-swimming alongside dolphins is the fastest early-to-mid game method for crossing oceans underwater. It outpaces boats for underwater exploration and is available before you get Depth Strider boots or a riptide trident.
• Treasure hunting: Feed a dolphin raw cod or raw salmon to have it guide you to the nearest shipwreck, buried treasure, or ocean ruins. After you loot the chest, break it and feed the dolphin again — it will then locate the next closest structure. This is the most efficient way to chain-farm underwater loot early in a world.
• Farming viability: Dolphins are not practical to farm. Their drops are limited to raw cod, which you can get far more efficiently from fishing or a cod farm. The experience drop is minimal. Their real value is their utility as living tools, not as a resource.
• Building enclosures: If you want to keep dolphins in a custom aquarium or base, you need to account for both their air and water needs. Use waterlogged slabs with air above to create breathing pockets, and make sure the enclosure is large enough that they do not suffocate against walls. Name them with a name tag to prevent despawning.
• Bedrock baby dolphins: In Bedrock Edition, baby dolphins can be grown by feeding them raw cod or raw salmon, with a growth time of 1200 ticks (60 seconds). This has no meaningful farm application but is a difference worth knowing.

Commands & NBT

Here are common commands for working with dolphins:

/summon minecraft:dolphin ~ ~ ~

/summon minecraft:dolphin ~ ~ ~ {CustomName:'"Flipper"',NoAI:1b}

/summon minecraft:dolphin ~ ~ ~ {Moistness:2400}

Bedrock Edition summon with spawn event for a baby dolphin:

/summon minecraft:dolphin ~ ~ ~ minecraft:dolphin_baby

Bedrock Edition summon for an angry dolphin:

/summon minecraft:dolphin ~ ~ ~ minecraft:dolphin_angry

Notable NBT keys (Java Edition):

• Moistness — Integer value tracking how long the dolphin can stay out of water before taking suffocation damage. Default is 2400 (ticks). When this reaches 0 on land, the dolphin starts taking damage.
• CanFindTreasure — Boolean (1 or 0). If true, this dolphin can lead a player to treasure when fed fish.
• GotFish — Boolean (1 or 0). If true, this dolphin has been fed fish by a player and is actively swimming toward treasure.
• TreasurePosX, TreasurePosY, TreasurePosZ — The coordinate destination the dolphin is swimming to when leading a player to treasure. These are 0 if CanFindTreasure is false.

Tags, Gamerules & Datapack Hooks

• Entity type tags (Java Edition): minecraft:aquatic — dolphins are included in this tag, which affects Impaling damage and other aquatic mob mechanics.
• Mob cap category: In Java Edition, dolphins count toward the water_creature mob cap alongside squid.
• Loot table path: loot_tables/entities/dolphin.json — can be modified in datapacks to customize drops.
• Relevant gamerules: doMobSpawning controls whether dolphins spawn naturally. mobGriefing does not directly affect dolphins since they do not interact with blocks.
• Behavior pack family tags (Bedrock): Dolphins belong to the aquatic, dolphin, and mob family groups in behavior packs.

Difficulty & Edition Differences

• Damage scaling: Dolphin melee damage scales with difficulty — 2 HP on Easy, 3 HP on Normal, and 4 HP on Hard. Not threatening individually, but a full hostile pod on Hard difficulty can chunk your health.
• One-hit kill exception (Java Edition): In Java Edition, killing a dolphin in a single hit does not provoke the pod. In Bedrock Edition, any hit triggers group aggression regardless of whether the target dies.
• Baby dolphins: Baby dolphins spawn naturally only in Bedrock Edition (10% chance). Java Edition has no baby dolphin spawning. In Bedrock, babies can be grown with raw cod or salmon.
• Dolphin’s Grace vs. speed boost: Java Edition applies a named status effect (Dolphin’s Grace) that appears in the effects HUD. Bedrock Edition applies the same speed increase but without a visible status effect.
• Item chasing: Dolphins chasing dropped items in water is a Java Edition exclusive behavior. Bedrock dolphins do not interact with dropped items in this way.
• Spawn Y-level: Java Edition spawns dolphins between Y 45 and sea level. Bedrock Edition spawns them between Y 50 and Y 64.
• Mob cap: In Java Edition, dolphins share the water creature mob cap with squid, limiting how many can exist simultaneously. Bedrock Edition does not use this specific cap system.

Sounds & Audio

Mojang’s lead sound designer Samuel Åberg recorded real dolphins at Kolmården Wildlife Park in Sweden to create the dolphin’s sound effects. This is one of the few mobs where the audio was sourced from live animals rather than synthesized.

• entity.dolphin.ambient — Idle clicking and chirping sounds while swimming
• entity.dolphin.ambient_water — Underwater idle sounds (multiple variants: idle_water1 through idle_water10)
• entity.dolphin.hurt — Pain sound when taking damage
• entity.dolphin.death — Death sound
• entity.dolphin.attack — Sound played when the dolphin performs a melee attack
• entity.dolphin.play — Sound played when a dolphin interacts with dropped items
• entity.dolphin.splash — Splash sound when leaping out of and back into water
• entity.dolphin.swim — Looping sound while actively swimming

In Java Edition, dolphins use the Friendly Creatures sound category for entity-dependent sound events.

History & Major Changes

• MINECON Earth 2017: Dolphins were first revealed in a sneak-peek trailer for the Update Aquatic. The initial model shown had a separate head and body, which was changed before release.
• Java Edition 18w15a: Dolphins were added to Java Edition as part of the 1.13 snapshots.
• Java Edition 1.13 (July 2018): Full release of dolphins with the Update Aquatic. Included Dolphin’s Grace status effect, treasure-finding behavior, pod aggression mechanics, and the dual breathing/suffocation system.
• Bedrock Edition 1.4.0 (beta 1.2.14.2): Dolphins were added to Bedrock Edition. Included baby dolphin spawning (10% chance), direct speed boost without a named status effect, and slightly different Y-level spawn range.
• Bedrock Edition 1.5.0: Various pathfinding and behavior fixes for dolphins.

Notable Bugs & Quirks

• Drowning while chasing items: In Java Edition, dolphins that chase dropped items can pathfind into deep water and fail to return to the surface, eventually drowning. This is a known behavior, not technically a bug — but it feels like one when your dolphin dies chasing a piece of kelp.
• Beaching themselves: Dolphins can occasionally beach themselves if they spawn or swim too close to shore. Once on land, they flop around trying to return to water, but if the terrain is not cooperative, they suffocate. Tragic, predictable, and very Minecraft.
• Waterlogged block breathing exploit: Placing a dolphin on a waterlogged bottom slab or chest with an air block above prevents it from drowning. This is the primary method for keeping dolphins alive in enclosed builds and is an intentional interaction, not a bug.
• Jumping between water bodies: Dolphins can jump over blocks to move from one body of water to another. If you build a dolphin enclosure without a high enough wall, they can and will escape. Two blocks of air clearance above the water surface is the minimum recommended containment height.

Advancements / Achievements

• “A Throwaway Joke” (Java Edition): Throw a trident at something. Hitting a dolphin with a trident counts, though doing this intentionally is both efficient and morally questionable.
• “Tactical Fishing” (Java/Bedrock): Catch a fish — not directly dolphin-related, but dolphins do drop raw cod, which is the same fish you would catch yourself.
• “Adventuring Time” (Java Edition): Visit all biomes, including the ocean biomes where dolphins spawn. You will likely encounter dolphins while completing this advancement.

Spin-offs, Culture & Trivia

• Real dolphin recordings: The dolphin sounds in Minecraft are sourced from real dolphins recorded at Kolmården Wildlife Park in Sweden by Mojang sound designer Samuel Åberg. This same approach was later used for panda sounds.
• Riding request denied: Players have frequently requested the ability to ride dolphins with a saddle. Mojang stated that a saddle would cover the blowhole and dorsal fin, effectively suffocating the dolphin. So they said no. Fair enough.
• Baiji dolphin mob vote: In 2018, a China Edition mob vote included the possibly extinct Baiji (Yangtze River) dolphin as a voting option. The panda won that vote and was added to the game instead.
• Developer disagreements: During development, there were significant disagreements among Mojang developers about how dolphins should behave. They ultimately decided against behaviors that deviate too far from real dolphin biology, including a proposed mechanic where dolphins would flee from drowned mobs.
• LEGO Minecraft set: Dolphins have appeared in official LEGO Minecraft sets, maintaining the blocky aesthetic of the game.
• Original model had a detached head: Early development footage from MINECON 2017 showed a dolphin model with a separate head and body. This was unified into a single model before release, which is visible in official 1.13 artwork.
• Cannot be tamed: Despite being one of the most player-friendly mobs in the game, dolphins cannot be tamed. Mojang has specifically stated they will not consider adding taming or riding for dolphins.

See Also

• Squid
• Glow Squid
• Axolotl
• Guardian
• Elder Guardian
• Drowned
• Turtle
• Cod
• Salmon
• Tropical Fish
• Pufferfish
• Ocean biomes
• Shipwreck
• Ocean Ruins
• Buried Treasure
• Impaling (enchantment)