Minecraft Tadpole

Minecraft tadpole: how to choose which frog it becomes

The tadpole is the frog's baby, although the game treats it as an entirely separate mob, something that happens with no other baby. It hatches from frogspawn in groups of 2 to 5 and swims aimlessly. If it ends up on land, it flops around like a fish looking for water and dies in under 20 seconds if it finds none.

The useful part is that you decide what it turns into. The frog variant does not depend on its parents but on the biome it is in when it grows up: a temperate biome gives a temperate frog, a cold one a cold frog and a warm one a warm frog. So if you want all three variants, just take tadpoles to each kind of biome and wait.

To move them, use a water bucket: a scooped-up tadpole keeps its health, age and name. It takes 20 minutes to grow, one Minecraft day, and each slimeball you feed it removes 10% of the time left. It follows you if you hold one. If you would rather it never grows, a golden dandelion keeps it a tadpole until you use another.

Watch out for axolotls, which hunt tadpoles even though they leave frogs alone. Like any baby, it drops no items or experience. And remember why all three frogs are worth having: each variant produces a different color of froglight when it eats a magma cube.

Sources: minecraft.wiki/Tadpole, minecraft.wiki/Frog