Mojang has been steadily rolling out visual overhauls for every baby mob in Minecraft across the 26.1 snapshot cycle, and Snapshot 8 closes the book on that effort. Five remaining baby mobs — the hoglin, zoglin, strider, panda, and snifflet — now sport dedicated models and textures instead of the old shrunken-adult look that has defined baby mobs for years. The snapshot also tucks in a welcome stonecutting change and a handful of hitbox corrections for baby mobs introduced in earlier snapshots.
Quick answer: To see the final baby mob redesigns, install Minecraft 26.1 Snapshot 8 through the Java Edition launcher or download the latest Bedrock Preview.
Which baby mobs received new visuals in Snapshot 8
The five mobs getting the treatment this time are all creatures that sat outside the earlier batches covering farm animals, aquatic life, wild mobs, and hostile undead. Each one now has a purpose-built baby model with unique proportions and texture work rather than a simple scale-down of the adult version.
- Baby Hoglin — compact body with tiny tusks and miniature stripes, making it look far less threatening than its adult counterpart.
- Baby Zoglin — retains the unsettling undead-hoglin aesthetic but in a noticeably smaller frame.
- Baby Strider — features a grumpier, perpetually unimpressed expression. You still cannot ride one until it grows up.
- Snifflet — the baby sniffer now resembles a small-scale version of the adult with an exaggerated, oversized snout.
- Baby Panda — rounder and fluffier, found naturally in bamboo jungle biomes.
These redesigns are primarily cosmetic. The mobs keep their existing behaviors, though some sound assets have been lightly updated to match the new look.
Hitbox adjustments for earlier baby mobs
Snapshot 7 introduced redesigned models for baby zombies, husks, drowned, piglins, zombified piglins, villagers, and zombie villagers. Snapshot 8 follows up by re-adjusting those hitboxes so the mobs can once again fit through spaces one block high and half a block wide. A bug in the previous snapshot had made some of these baby mobs unable to traverse tight gaps, and the corrected bounding boxes restore that movement.
Stonecutting quality-of-life changes
Beyond baby mobs, Snapshot 8 adds two practical crafting shortcuts. Deepslate can now be placed directly into the Stonecutter to produce cobbled, polished, brick, and tile variants in a single step. Stone similarly gains a direct cobbled-variant recipe in the Stonecutter. Both changes eliminate intermediate crafting steps that previously required a crafting table.
Other notable changes and fixes
Adult horse blackdot markings have been tweaked to look visually consistent with the baby horse markings introduced in an earlier snapshot. Some adult sound variant assets — the data-driven cat, pig, cow, and chicken sounds added in Snapshot 7 — received minor updates, and a bug preventing the cat's stray_ambient and purreow variant sounds from playing has been fixed.
The bug fix list also addresses several issues outside the baby-mob scope. Bone meal no longer gets consumed when used on a bamboo stalk blocked by a block above it, and bone meal now correctly works on grass blocks beneath cave air or void air. Golden dandelions properly stop baby brown mooshrooms from aging, and age-locked baby bees no longer incorrectly age while inside a hive. The Resource Pack version has been bumped to 81.1, and a new UI sprite for IME preedit overlay backgrounds has been added.
How the baby mob rollout progressed through 26.1 snapshots
Mojang spread the baby mob visual overhaul across multiple snapshots rather than shipping everything at once. Earlier snapshots covered farm animals like chickens, cows, pigs, and sheep, then moved through aquatic creatures, wild animals, mounts, and hostile undead mobs. Snapshot 7 handled the zombie family, piglins, and villagers while also introducing adult sound variants and a trumpet note block instrument tied to copper blocks. Snapshot 8 wraps up the remaining five mobs and marks what Mojang calls the "final gameplay features" headed into the spring game drop.
How to test Snapshot 8
Step 1: Open the Minecraft Launcher for Java Edition. Navigate to the "Installations" tab and make sure snapshots are enabled.
Step 2: Select 26.1 Snapshot 8 from the version list and launch the game. For Bedrock Edition, download the latest Preview build through your platform's store instead.
With all baby mobs now carrying their own distinct models, the visual refresh that started several snapshots ago is complete. The changes are largely cosmetic, but they bring a level of character to young mobs that the old uniform-scaling approach never could. Whether these designs survive testing unchanged or get further tweaks before the full 26.1 game drop remains to be seen, but the snapshot is live now for anyone who wants to see a grumpy baby strider in person.