The Polar Bear is a Tragic Missed Opportunity

Comments · 476

• RE

  @rexyjp1237 · 5 months ago

  I personally think polar bears should be an exeption to the no hostile animals rule considering they are some of the only animals to activly hunt humans.<br>Maybe they could have a preference for zombies and skeletons since they are humanoid mobs too, gives a player a reason to keep them around while still representating how they are in real life.

  1.2K

• TH

  @thebigmanishere · 5 months ago

  Bees don&apos;t have a proboscus. So that black part is actually the tongue

  482

• GL

  @Glory2Snowstar · 5 months ago (edited)

  I can respect the idea of adding animals into Minecraft to spread awareness of their plights, it&apos;s just a shame that you have to have pretty privilege for it. Bats are absolutely CRUCIAL for ecosystems, involved with pollination, rainforest replanting, pest control... yet they&apos;re glorified particles here. <br>Bats deserve a whole update for them alone, you could do so much with them. Plus, people are learning how adorable they are, that&apos;s merch right there!

  538

• KA

  @kaiuki736 · 5 months ago

  <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-d3sBd_BoCw&amp;t=574">9:34</a> &nbsp;bro really did a 360° to kill the baby bear 😭

  245

• GE

  @geckomata9652 · 5 months ago (edited)

  It&apos;s very hard to balance realism and positive interactions with massive carnivore that&apos;s one of the few species that&apos;ll actually hunt people if given the opportunity, so I think they should remain dangerous to players, and become dangerous to mobs. Real polar bears need to eat a lot of meat and seal blubber, and they have really good sense of smell to track seals and find carrion, so perhaps making them hunt zombies and drowns near surface could be a good way to give them value for players.

  268

• SE

  @sebastianturner2458 · 5 months ago

  I feel like the real problem is that polar bears are just legitimately terrifying in real life. You <i>really</i> do not want to interact with a polar bear in any way, because they are one of the vanishingly few animals that just normally see humans as food. Pretty much every other big animal that&apos;s a threat to humans will only attack if it feels forced to, whether it&apos;s frightened, hungry, or protecting young. Polar bears are the main exception, since they&apos;re <i>so</i> big and have had so little interaction with humans - everything else that wants to eat us we&apos;ve either scared or killed off.<br><br>Now, all of that said, they still shouldn&apos;t be allowed to go extinct - they&apos;re not nearly enough to a threat to modern humanity to warrant that, and any extinction can be unexpectedly problematic. But portraying them as anything but potentially hostile and dangerous is very much against Mojang&apos;s current policies regarding real world animals. <br><br>They&apos;d probably function much better as a sort of light warden-like mob: dangerous, and better to avoid than fight. I like the idea of them being more aggressive to hostile mobs than the player, too. While not exactly &quot;useful&quot;, it&apos;s an interesting interaction that benefits the player when it comes up. Maybe they could be hostile, but easily distracted from an attack by dropping meat for them? It would let the player get away safely, but not fully tame them - the idea of taming major predators is not exactly a great one to spread, and while I normally think Mojang&apos;s attempts at education are a bit heavy-handed and silly, that&apos;s definitely not something you want to encourage. I mean, it&apos;s... sorta possible? But not without a <i>lot</i> of skill and danger.<br><br><br>Overall, polar bears should really be rarer and more dangerous than they currently are - as is, they&apos;re basically just decorative. I think if they were made significantly bigger and rarer, they would be cool enough to encounter that it would provide a functional message of preservation. Think, like, Subnautica ghost leviathans?

  138

• IN

  @Indigoharpy · 5 months ago

  <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-d3sBd_BoCw&amp;t=82">1:22</a> Axolotls are actually adult salamanders, it&apos;s just they have a trait called neoteny which means they retain juvenile traits into adulthood

  320

• EM

  @EmilianoAcosta-r7w · 5 months ago (edited)

  <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-d3sBd_BoCw&amp;t=77">1:17</a> Sorry man, but Axolotls are NOT just young salamanders. They ARE one species of Salamanders that posses the hability to reach sexual maturity in their larvae stage without really going through metamorphosis.

  38

• RO

  @RobinRhombus2 · 5 months ago (edited)

  Correction: Agnes was talking about removing polar bears from the frozen ocean biome, not from the game entirely. Polar bears were added in the frostburn update to go alongside the ice spikes biome well before they were set to spawn on icebergs in the aquatic update.<br><br>Edit: Also, Minecraft&apos;s bee isn&apos;t exactly a great example of raising awareness for an endangered species either. It perpetuates a lot of harmful ideas about their conservation that make real conservation harder. The are thousands of species of bees and amongst the ones on that list, honeybees are not one of the ones that are endangered. But treating them like they&apos;re the default, the only bees that actually matter, they pull attention away from the ones that actually need our help.

  252

• MI

  @midloran · 5 months ago

  <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-d3sBd_BoCw&amp;t=120">2:00</a> little guy can&apos;t climb on the block

  42

• RO

  @Ro321chile · 5 months ago

  The bear actively hunts humans, yet, it&apos;s neutral and only attacks with a cub....that&apos;s a brown bear characteristic more than anything

  11

• GA

  @garg4531 · 5 months ago

  Honestly I keep forgetting that polar bears are even in minecraft....<br><br>Like what is there to do with them other than put them in zoos? Every other mob has some sort of use or purpose, however niche it may be

  57