An evolutionary tree of the mobs of Minecraft as of 1.16
627 comments · 97% upvoted · source · other discussions
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ZombehArmyLTD
NitroHydroRay [OP]
An accompanying tree for the humanoids in Minecraft
Hi everyone, just wanted to share what I’ve been working on for the last few weeks. As I am fascinated by evolutionary biology, I thought it would be fun to put together an evolutionary tree of the mobs in Minecraft. This tree is a mixture of actual biology and my personal headcanons, and so far as I know there is nothing objectively wrong with where I placed specific mobs, but there could be a lot subjectively wrong if you were to interpret the mobs differently than I did. In other words, the biology should be correct, but don’t take this as statement as to the actual canon within the game. I should also note that this tree makes the assumption that all life originated in the overworld, rather than evolving separately in each dimension. I also included non-mob blocks and items that would likely be considered animals, or evidence of animals existing.
For anyone that does care, I’d like to add a few details about why I choose to place certain things where I did.
In the large tree, the black line refers to actual relationships. This includes real evolutionary relationships as we currently understand them, as well as relationships that are easily intuited. For example, cows and sheep are actually closely related, while spiders and cave spiders can be easily intuited to be related.
The red line refers to relationships to Minecraft creatures without clear real equivalents. These are purely personal speculation, not biological fact.
The purple line means “dimensional distortion.” This is meant similarly to the estimated relationships shown by the red lines and exists to point out that mobs in other dimensions reflect distorted versions of overworld animals. My personal theory is that interdimensional travel results in increased mutation rates leading to more significant changes over time, but this is personal headcanon, and should not be taken as fact.
The orange line in the humanoid tree refers to constructed or summoned creatures such as golems and vexes. I considered jokingly including boats, minecarts, paintings, and item frames in this category.
TheBlazingFire123
I’m pretty sure Villagers, Pillagers, Witches, and Traders are all the same species
NitroHydroRay [OP]
Yeah, probably. Woulda been a lot less stuff on that tree if I left them all out though.
Nephyst
What about skeletons? :O
Undead link from Steve?
NitroHydroRay [OP]
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Marc_IRL
A few more of those lines need to be black ;-)
NitroHydroRay [OP]
Yeah, definitely. It just felt it was just clearer if I made the other lines consistent even if some are more assumed than others. Hope you like it otherwise!
atomfullerene
This is pretty great. As a biologist, I often get irritated at how people draw these when I have seen them in the past, but I like almost everything about this one. I especially like the addition of lines specifically denoting undead, dimensional and summoned/constructed objects, the magma walkers as synapsids, and sea pickles where sea cucumbers should be.
If I was going to pick arguments, I'd say shulkers are a bit more like brachiopods than bivalves, and you could arguably put creepers in with pigs since they were literally a mutation of pigs (Notch put the pig body the wrong way around to make the first creeper on accident) but I think they work better where you have them.
Nice work!
NitroHydroRay [OP]
Honestly, I agree with you that shulkers are a bit uncertain where they're placed now, but that's just how things go when you try to put fantasy creatures into real clades haha. Though creepers were derived from pigs during the development on Minecraft, I feel they honestly have very little in common beyond that. I 100% agree about being annoyed by a lot of these fan-made evolutionary trees, what prompted the creation of this one was literally my own confusion upon seeing a really inaccurate version posted to r/minecraft previously. I'm glad you think this one works though!
atomfullerene
It really makes you note how much of the tree of life is missing from the game. I want to see some of the rest filled in now. I mean we could at least get worms of some sort added in. It's thematic for a digging game anyway.
ZomboyGameplays
I kinda think skeletons are just zombies that existed for so long that they lost their skin, and thus making it form part of the zombie branch. But other than that really good evolutinary tree!
PWBI
azzayu
You forgot the zombie horse, but still this looks gr8!
NitroHydroRay [OP]
KronosTheCat
Only available through chests so I wouldn’t include it
[deleted]
Speaking as a biologist:
That's great! Now make one for all the plants!
NitroHydroRay [OP]
I certainly considered it. The problem is, a lot of minecraft plants are very vague about what they actually are. How do you classify an oak tree that grows apples???
[deleted]
I would order then in the highest systematic class they both share. In this case Rosidae
My problem would be the Chorus plants. I mean they are obviously Angiospermae but it would be hard to order them in a specific systematic class without looking at the fruit or the flower.
NitroHydroRay [OP]
What about something like vines? There's vining plants in all sorts of groups of plants. Admittedly I'm more familiar with zoology than botany anyway, so maybe there is clearer classifications than I realize.
[deleted]
Vines would be nearly impossible to classify since the Minecraft vines are made up. They grow from the top to the bottom and I can't think of a vine which grows like that since they need nutritions from the earth. I'd classify them as Monocotylydones since they have no flower or the flower is to small to see.
Then again, since they grow from top to bottom they might not be vines at all but some form of parasite since they would need the nutritions from the tree. That would also explain why it grows in swamps and the jungle
NitroHydroRay [OP]
Fair enough
[deleted]
Another question. Do you think that maybe Endermites are some kind of subspecies of the silverfish? It would make sense that they traveled through dimensions being this close to the End portal and all.
NitroHydroRay [OP]
I think they definitely diverged with silverfish as a result of transportation through the end portal, yes. Whether they're still close enough to silverfish to be considered a subspecies rather than separate species is up for debate though.
Proxy_PlayerHD
Equinox087
The creeper should’ve been related to the pigs
TRiceTheEffort
[deleted]
Creepers aren't vertebrates. Notch has alluded several times to them being plants.
NitroHydroRay [OP]
From my explanation post (which you can view here)
" Aren’t creepers described as “plant-like?” Why are they included with the vertebrates?
They have indeed often been described as plant-like by various developers. It is my belief that they are vertebrates with a symbiotic relationship with some form of plant. All promotional merchandise that shows creeper internal anatomy shows the presence of bones and the general anatomy reflects a familiar yet distorted version of the common tetrapod body plan. They do not share much in common with either reptiles or mammals, and so I split them off early in the vertebrate portion of the tree."
Axetheaxemaster
What do you think of striders being blob fishes?
I might be wrong, but i think synapids have 4 legs whereas the strider only has 2.
NitroHydroRay [OP]
Tetrapods have 4 or less limbs. Snakes are tetrapods and they don't have any! There's no reason a synapsid couldn't do the same.
ToasterDirective
Ooh nice job with the placement of the elytra! That alone gives you my upvote
myspace-2
sorry, i’m confused, an elytra isn’t alive, is it?
i always thought it was like an emergency parachute for the end ships
ToasterDirective
The word “elytra” actually originates as an insect body part. They are the outer shell things that cover the wings of beetles. For ladybugs, for example, it’s the part with the spots. This is why they’re grouped in with other bugs. It actually makes me wonder: if elytra in Minecraft are the same as they are in real life, what does the animal that usually has them look like? Maybe it’s some extinct insect that lived in the End dimension.
myspace-2
o huh that’s rly interesting, thank you for letting me know. it kinda makes you wonder why it doesn’t fill any armor slots if it’s similar to light armor on insects
DZpolishPro
It's not very scientific, but in my opinion elyta comes from phantoms because with their drop we can fix it. Alternatively, elytry was created from the phantom drop. Phantoms were originally to be found in the End, it is possible that their ancestors came from there.
the_dragon_kingler
So the original phantom is extinct and they attack players because maybe humans caused their extinction and at one point an original phantom got to the end and mutated into the ender dragon wich makes sense the ender dragon and phantom both share the "fly low to the ground and charge the player attack" wich was at one point the ender dragon's only attack
waitingtilmymainsgud
You forgot snow foxes, elder guardians and The killer bunny
NitroHydroRay [OP]
I left out variants I considered to be of the same species, as well as mobs that don't spawn naturally.
Growlitherapy
Why isn't the Nautilus with the cephalopods? Also, aren't endermites chelicerates as well?
NitroHydroRay [OP]
They are. I just had trouble getting the label in the right place. I also considered endermites as literal mites (which would be chelicerates) but eventually decided the visual similarity with silverfish made that a more reasonable choice.
[deleted]
You are showing that endermites are related to silverfish. Wouldn't endermites be related to spiders since they are mites (which are arachnids) instead of silverfish (which are insects)?
TheThirdRobot69
Elytra aren’t alive...
NitroHydroRay [OP]
...and neither are nautilus shells. However, they likely came from something that was once alive.
TheMistyMew
Shouldn’t Elytras be related to Phantoms? Phantom Membranes are the only material able to repair them after all.
Also the flying animation for Phantoms is much more similar to the gliding effect you get from wearing the Elytra than the fluttery bee wings
MrGumieBear
Wow, how have I never thought of that before?
PescavelhoTheIdle
Kinda miffed there isn't an actual Nautilus mob, but I guess Nautilus Shells are meant to be like fossils.
Chris_A_75
Alabama kid's family tree
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pincafe2
Broflake-Melter
I love this.
It's good enough for me to use. Can I have permission to hand this in my classroom?
NitroHydroRay [OP]
G_flux
What about mobs that were at one point in the game, but were removed, like giants or Rana?
Timmy-Jimmy
Now you just have to add all 3,584 variants of tropical fish ;)
[deleted]
Surely Villagers and Players would be closer to pigs than bunnies which would them make some more sense that you just do some dimensional differentiating and you get piglins.
uselessweeb557
Ah yes something something mesopotamia
_Maveryk_
Overall this is really good but I can tell you were at a loss for ideas while placing the creeper lmao. You could just consider it a really mutated pig because that’s what they were meant to be in the beginning of Minecraft. Just something to think about.
A_suspicious_turtle
so u saying that a elytra is a animal
Planticious66
It comes from an insect. Jesus christ
[deleted]
Elytra's are living beings too.
Stop elytra abuse, justice for elytra's!
PavelDobCZ23
Make flora evolutionary tree too please. It is very cool and kinda educational.
alzorureddit
I always interpreted phantoms as being flying manta rays
Not sure I agree with the placement of creepers either but to be fair, what even ARE they
sterrre
Creepers are related to pigs.
Creepers are first shown, based on a failed pig model Notch had created (he mixed up the length and height of the body[1]). They were the first mob added in Survival Test.
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NitroHydroRay [OP]
Yep, I included this in my extension of this tree, which focuses on humanoids https://i.imgur.com/6cCTsOP.png
Rabbits to humans: "We are cut from the same cloth!"
Julius_Gaius_Caesar5 59 points · May 2020
The definition of a species is a biologically distinct organism that has very distinct morphological and biological differences from others. weather or not they can breed together is an old definition, if that was the case humans and Neanderthals would be the same species. Of course species don't really mean anything, it is just a way for humans to understand the relationship that animals have in the ecosystem, and by no means does it make paleontology a less adequate science.
Gianni_Crow 29 points · May 2020
This made me look it up because back in the day, when I was a wide eyed young biology student, humans and Neanderthals were the same species. Just separate subspecies (homo sapiens sapiens vs homo sapiens neanderthalensis). Seems the humble Neanderthal was promoted since my departure from academia. TIL.
allegedlynerdy 13 points · May 2020
It's a field of contention in anthropology. Because if we make neanderthals a subspecies for that, then we also have to make the devisonans a subspecies for interbreeding with neanderthals, and we start getting issues of non anatomically modern hominids which coexisted with neanderthals that may have interbred with neanderthals, but probably never coexisted with anatomically modern humans, so are they a subspecies? And if they're a subspecies, does that mean this even more distant ancestor is also a subspecies?
It gets very complicated unfortunately. It might be simpler to admit that our definition of species just doesn't work for the paradigm of some forms of evolution. To give a modern example, there's the "big bird" species of Galapagos finches that came into being in the 80s when a Finch accidentally ended up on a different island, interbred, with the offspring then inbreeding into a new species. Which means under the modern definition all species involved are subspecies.
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couldbemage 12 points · May 2020
People often fall into the trap of thinking that the lack of a sharp dividing line invalidates the categories. Sure, a low saturation black and a very dark grey may be the same, but that doesn't invalidate the concepts of black and grey.
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iPlxel 10 points · May 2020
rabbits: we were so close to being a human but no we have to be killed by humans for luck & jump boost potions D:
Bubolinobubolan 9 points · May 2020
Both species are very distant relatives of some tipe of mice or something. This is visible in monkeys like lemurs (the relationship is visible) and for rabbits it is obvious.
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