It has been about a month into the year, and Mojang informed Minecraft players about their first 2026 update on January 7 through a YouTube video. This update provides so many quirks to the game that might change the view of Minecraft for better or for worse.
The original look of many of the baby animals in Minecraft consisted of the head of the adult animal attached to a smaller body. Although nostalgic, Mojang decided to change the looks of all the baby mobs. The textures of eight mobs such as baby pigs, wolves, cats, rabbits, cows and sheep were changed. The main differences with the new animal children from the adults includes the smaller heads. The chicks now have a new texture with a single little, blocky body, and one-pixel eyes instead of their usual two-pixel ones. These animals also include new audios.
Rabbits do not just get a new look. They now have new movements such as sitting up, shifting their ears and tilting their heads at a player. Mojang explains in the video that it is an old mob that was begging for an update.
Another, seemingly unpopular addition to the game is that name tags are now craftable. With an ingot from either iron, copper or gold and a piece of paper, these items are now easy to access. This can be extremely helpful since name tags originally could be found in naturally mob spawners, temples or fortresses, which can take a long time to find fishing for hours at a time.
Another way to achieve name tags is through buying them from librarians for outrageous prices. Name tags used to be rare to achieve, but now with the ability to craft them, keeping track of pets, villagers or mobs will be easier now.
The Minecraft community has had some mixed feelings about this update. People on Tumblr and YouTube are quite positive about the animals, calling them cute and many even drawing the babies. Rabbits have been getting lots of love for their new, chunky bodies.
Not all people have been happy. Some of the community are quite angry with Minecraft for giving them such a small update. They say that Minecraft has been giving them new textures that make the game more “realistic” and modded, instead of dealing with features that have not been touched since they were created, like fixing mob AI’s or mounted animals like horses and donkeys.
With the new small updates, there has been quite a disturbance in the community and whispers about an End update which is another feature that has not been touched since its creation.
