I Just Really Like Ants

#19 - What if Minecraft added Ants?

Ants are neutral mobs that function quite similarly to bees - Anthills generate in a variety of forested and tree-heavy biomes, containing 2-3 Ants inside.

Ants are Neutral mobs, so if you hit one, they hit you back, dealing 1 heart of damage each time. If you hit one, the entire swarm comes after you. They only have 8 health and are susceptible to Bane of Arthropods. Not that that matters much, because they drop nothing when killed. They're better left alive!

Ants come in 8 different colors, depending on the biome they spawned in. Ants are inherently hostile to all other colors of ant except their own, and will fight each other on sight, so make sure to keep them separated! The biomes for each color of ant are as follows:

Red Ants: Forest, Flower Forest, Wooded Badlands Yellow Ants: Birch Forest, Old Growth Birch Forest Green Ants: Mangrove Swamp Black Ants: Taiga, Snowy Taiga, Old Growth Pine Taiga, Old Growth Spruce Taiga, Windswept Forest Brown Ants: Dark Forest Orange Ants: Jungle, Sparse Jungle, Bamboo Jungle Blue Ants: Dappled Forest White Ants: Pale Garden

Ants can be bred with Leaf Litter, but two ants of different colors would much rather fight than breed. Baby Ants will match the color of their parents, not the biome they are born in.

Much like Bees pollinating from flowers, Ants gather leaves and organic materials from various plant blocks - Short/Tall Grass, Ferns, Bushes, Red Shrubs, Azaleas, and all Leaves make for prime places for Ants to forage. Don't worry though - they don't break their food supply.

Ants will carry Leaves in their mandibles and bring them back to the nest, where they will feed them to their underground fungus gardens for food. When they have enough, the Anthill will look different from the side and can be brushed to obtain the Ant Fungus!

Ant Fungus is a block that can be placed similarly to Glow Lichen or Sculk Veins. This complex mycelial network is coated in the pheromones of the Ants that tended to it - Pheromones that many other mobs know to avoid. These can be used to get mobs to go where you want them to go, to move away from your base, and more!

Ant Fungi drop when mined with Shears. Ravagers can break through Ant Fungus, giving illagers a key edge over it in raids if it's the kind they're afraid of. The mobs that each Ant Fungus wards off are as follows:

Red Ant Fungus: Zombies, Zombie Villagers, Husks, Drowned, Zombie Horses, Zombie Nautiluses, and Camel Husks. Yellow Ant Fungus: Skeletons, Strays, Bogged, Parched, Wither Skeletons, and Skeleton Horses. Green Ant Fungus: Slimes, Magma Cubes, and Sulfur Cubes Black Ant Fungus: Endermen and Endermites Brown Ant Fungus: Villagers, Wandering Traders, Pillagers, Vindicators, Evokers, and Witches Orange Ant Fungus: Sheep, Pigs, Cows, Chickens, Rabbits, Wolves, Ocelots, Cats, Horses, Donkeys, Mules, Llamas, Trader Llamas, Foxes, Armadillos, Frogs, Tadpoles, Polar Bears, Pandas, Turtles, Goats, Parrots, Sniffers, Happy Ghasts and Mooshrooms Blue Ant Fungus: Spiders, Cave Spiders, and Silverfish White Ant Fungus: Wardens (this doesn't particularly make Wardens any more cheesable, since the Warden can either take the long way around from the scary fungus or just blast you from the other side, and given the rarity of finding an anthill in a Pale Garden it seemed like a fun use case)

In addition, all colors of Ant Fungus will naturally scare off any Ant not the same color as it, allowing Players to naturally differentiate different Ant species in farms and such.

Anthills full of the Ant Fungi will have the same pheromone properties, allowing players to maybe get a sense for them in the wild and prevent future ant wars on biome borders. To make more Anthills, simply craft any color of Ant Fungus with a Grass Block.

i wanted to zoom my camera in more but then they got too blurry 😭

theres also a few lavender bushes that have a bunch of honeybees buzzing around, but i havent gotten the chance to photograph them yet

I love her

Refs (TW FOR ANT)

Eastern Black Carpenter Ants (Camponotus pennsylvanicus) tending to Woolly Alder Aphids (Prociphilus tessellatus), taken July 3, 2026, in New Hampshire, US