Today Mojang announced that the new mob named the Sniffer will come in Minecraft's yet-unnamed major update 1.20.
According to the announcement, the new mob will soon appear in a new snapshot for the Java edition and in a beta for the Bedrock edition of the game. For the moment, testers will be able to check the Sniffer in creative mode and won't be able to use its egg-hatching mechanic, but full functionality will be implemented when 1.20 launches.
In its final form, the Sniffer will hatch from eggs that can be found in suspicious sand blocks via the new Archaeology feature announced a few days ago. You'll then have to help the egg hatch and wait until the sniffer grows into the massive mob it is. You can check out what it looks like in this short video.
Being an ancient creature that just came back from extinction, the Sniffer can sniff out seeds for plants that are equally extinct and you'll be able to bring these back too as decorations.
If the concept of the Sniffer sounds familiar, it's because its inclusion was voted by the community at Minecraft Live 2022 in October.
If you're not familiar with Minecraft, it's a massively-popular sandbox game currently published by Microsoft following its acquisition of Mojang on pretty literally every platform with a chip inside. I'd list them for you, but I've honestly lost count. The latest major patch, The Wild Update, was released a few months ago, and we're still waiting for additional information on 1.20, which was introduced in October at Minecraft Live.
We're also waiting for its younger brother, Minecraft Legends, which isn't a sandbox game. Yet, it brings back the world, the characters, and the aesthetic for a charming action real-time-strategy game. It's coming for Xbox Series X|S, Xbox One, PS5, PS4, Nintendo Switch, and PC on April 18, 2023. Of course, it'll also be included on Game Pass.
