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NEUTRAL Present since 1.14 or earlier

Polar Bear mob in Minecraft

The Polar Bear is a strong neutral bear of snowy plains, ice spikes and frozen oceans. It ignores you most of the time, but an adult with a cub nearby attacks anyone who comes close, so give families a wide berth.

Health: 3015 hearts
Behavior: Neutral
Main drop: Raw Cod
Found in: 4 biomes

Polar Bear stats

Health: 30 15 hearts
Behavior: Neutral
Main drop: Raw Cod
Spawns in: 4 biomes
Size: 1.4 × 1.4 blocks
XP when killed: 1 to 3none as a baby
Speed: 0.25
Detection range: 20 blocks

// Experience drops only when a player kills it. Speeds are the game’s internal values, not blocks per second.

How much damage Polar Bear deals

Damage to a player without armor, by world difficulty. 1 ♥ = 2 damage points.

Melee attack

Peaceful00 ♥

Easy42 ♥

Normal63 ♥

Hard94.5 ♥

// Armor, Protection and Resistance reduce these values. Base values read from the game code (26.3).

Where to find Polar Bear

Biomes where it spawns naturally, with its share of the spawns in each group.

Spawning

Group size: 1 to 2
Light level: 9 or more
Spawns on: Ice

Polar Bear drops

Polar Bear dropsFrom the loot table · chance per kill

Raw Cod+1 per Looting level · One of 2 rare items · Cooked if it dies on fire0–2

Raw Salmon+1 per Looting level · One of 2 rare items · Cooked if it dies on fire0–2

Health compared

Health vs other neutral mobshealth points

Iron Golem100

Enderman40

Llama15–30

Polar Bear30

Trader Llama15–30

Drowned20

Panda20

Traits

Properties set in the game files.

Freeze immuneUnaffected by powder snow cold.

Baby Polar Bear

Spawns as a baby All baby mobs →

Command

Summon a Polar Bear/summon →

/summon minecraft:polar_bear ~ ~ ~

Where polar bears live

Polar bears roam the Snowy Plains, the Ice Spikes and frozen oceans, walking on the ice and swimming between floes. They swim well, so jumping into the water does not get you away from an angry bear. The cold does not bother them either: powder snow, which freezes most creatures, does them no harm.

When a polar bear attacks

A lone adult is neutral. It only fights if you hit it first.
An adult near a cub is hostile. It charges anyone who gets too close to its young.
Hitting a cub is a bad idea. The adults around it come after you.

A bear rears up on its hind legs just before it strikes, which is your cue to back off. It hits hard and has a lot of health for an animal, so early in the game the smart move is to walk around a family. If you have to fight, keep a shield raised and back away, or shoot it with a bow from a ledge it cannot climb.

What a polar bear gives you

A polar bear drops fish: raw cod or raw salmon, already cooked if it dies while burning. It is not worth farming. You cannot tame or breed polar bears, so every bear you kill is one less in the area, and a fishing rod gives you more fish with no risk at all.

Surviving the snowy biomes

Bears are only one of the dangers out there. At night, strays spawn in the same snowy biomes and shoot arrows that slow you down, so a fight with a bear after dark can turn crowded fast. If you are crossing the Snowy Plains, look for an igloo to shelter in, and wear leather boots near powder snow: they let you walk on top of it instead of sinking in and freezing like you would without them.

✓ Checked in Java Edition 26.3 · updated 1 November 2026