#fair warning/don't worry most of my thoughts are not nearly as extensive lol i just find creepers especially fun to do this shit with

[zosonils]

I am asking you about your speculative minecraft biology headcanons 👀

oh yeah babey swag!! since you didn't specify a mob i am going to talk about creepers since i have the most stuff for them and everyone loves creepers. aw man

my guess [and one that i think is pretty agreed upon in minecraft biology headcanons] is that creepers are more akin to sentient plants or fungi than animals! they reproduce asexually by producing spores when they reach maturity, which they spread across a large area by exploding. they specifically seek out threats like players to explode near because if the force of an explosion kills or seriously injures a possible predator, the baby creepers [called creeplets] will have a safer head start

before they're mature and ready to explode creepers aren't as hostile, but they're incredibly territorial and hiss the same way they do before exploding as a threat display. while some creepers are solitary, the majority form packs [or rustles, as they're called] as creeplets with any other creepers whose spores landed and matured close by. typically a rustle of creepers will begin as a fairly large congregation of up to a few dozen juveniles, then gradually decrease in number as members either are killed by outside factors or explode pre-maturity to ensure the safety of its group, until the small handful remaining are ready to reproduce and go their separate ways so as not to accidentally kill each other in the ensuing explosions

incidentally, it may be possible to 'tame' a creeper by raising it from babyhood so that it sees you as a member of its rustle and thus not a threat. it'll still want to explode when it grows up and starts producing spores, though, so you're getting a hole in your backyard either way.

it's a little hard to pin down what a creeper would eat - they live in caves and seem nocturnal so they can't solely photosynthesise, their only actual method of attacking kills them so they'd be poor hunters, and they don't seem to have any teeth to chew plants with. the most likely options i can think of are that they're either insectivores, maybe using their weird shape to more effectively go after subterranean bugs, or scavengers who subsist on carrion and small fruits and the like. or perhaps they absorb nutrients from dead things with some kind of root system? that'd be another good reason for a reproducing creeper to want to kill someone in the process. much to think about!

i've scribbled a diagram of my speculative creeper life cycle but i think it might be trypophobia adjacent, so it's under this here cut to be safe