How to Breed Sniffers in Minecraft

Guide Java Bedrock

Quick answer: Feed torchflower seeds to two sniffers and they breed, laying a sniffer egg as an item. The egg hatches in 10 minutes on a moss block (20 minutes anywhere else). Sniffers never spawn naturally - your first egg comes from brushing suspicious sand in warm ocean ruins.

What you need

2 adult sniffers
Torchflower seeds (sniffers dig them up, or farm torchflowers)
A moss block to hatch the egg faster

Step by step

Get your first sniffer: brush suspicious sand in warm ocean ruins until a sniffer egg pops out, then place it and wait for it to hatch (10 min on moss, 20 min elsewhere).
You need two sniffers to breed - hatch a second egg from the ruins, or breed once you already have a pair.
Collect torchflower seeds: sniffers dig them up themselves (50/50 with pitcher pods), or grow and harvest torchflowers.
Hold the seeds to lead both sniffers close together, then feed each of them a torchflower seed.
Hearts appear and the pair produces a sniffer egg item plus 1-7 experience - no waiting for a baby to grow this way.
Place the egg on a moss block for the fastest hatch (10 minutes, two crack stages). Moss from shipwrecks, lush caves or a moss farm works; note pale moss blocks do NOT speed it up.

Java vs Bedrock

Identical in Java and Bedrock. On Java, sniffer eggs hatch without random ticks, so randomTickSpeed does not affect them.

Versions: Sniffers arrived in 1.20 (Trails & Tales) on both editions, after winning the 2022 mob vote.

Frequently asked questions

Can sniffers spawn in the wild?

No - every sniffer comes from a sniffer egg, either brushed from suspicious sand in warm ocean ruins or bred from two sniffers.

What do sniffers dig up?

Torchflower seeds and pitcher pods with equal odds. They dig only while on the ground, not leashed, in water, tempted, panicking, or in a boat or minecart.