Minecraft’s new baby mobs have turned the chicken into a celebrity

The world seemingly let out a collective “aww“ after Mojang revealed its redesign for baby farm animal mobs in Minecraft the first week of January. The chunkier, wide-eyed glow-ups have made every animal the digital equivalent of a Squishmallow. But while people are falling in love with all the reworked mobs, chicks in particular stand out as the favored babe.

In case you haven’t been enchanted yet: On Wednesday, Mojang posted photographs of eight re-imagined mobs. Previously, baby versions of animals were merely smaller iterations of adult creatures, but with large heads. Now, the new baby mobs have unique audio, models and textures — and they’ve been engineered for maximum cuteness. A Minecraft game artist in the announcement blog straight-up compares the babes to stuffed animals.

Players who have snapshots enabled for Minecraft, or have enabled previews for betas can collect infant wolves, kittens, piglets, calves, chicks, ocelots, lambs, and baby rabbits now. All of these animals can spawn with small variances from one another. Mojang notes that the “toast” variant of the baby rabbit, for example, immortalizes one player’s missing pet from real life.

Baby chickens, however, hold the distinction of being the smallest bairns in the entire game now. Baby chicks also have one of the most noticeable transformations. Before, baby chickens kind of looked like weird ducks. Now, they’re a teensy flaxen cube whose mere existence conjures a primal need to squeeze. It is no mistake that the announcement post for the new feature puts the baby chickens front and center.

Unsurprisingly, the new baby chicks lend themselves to all sorts of artwork and memes that hone in on their irresistible new charm. “I adore how Minecraft baby chickens look like chicken nuggets now,” one fan writes on social media site X.

Anticipating that players will likely start hoarding the new baby animals, Mojang has made it so fans can now craft name tags with paper and any metal nugget. But if you’re hankering to get baby chickens ASAP, you’ll probably want to start by exploring chilly, tempered, and warm biomes.