Game Theory - The Minecraft Sniffer Is More Important Than You Think!

Episode Date: May 1, 2024

Join Game Theory Host Tom as he pieces together the ancient Minecraft lore and finds exactly where the Sniffer fits into things! *Credits:* Writers: Tom Robinson, and Eddie “NostalGamer” Robinson Editors: Dan "Cybert" Seibert, Tyler Mascola, Warak, Pedro Freitas, JayskiBean, Shnaia "Naya" Llamera, and Shannon (Bomb0i) Sound Designer: Yosi Berman

What is the sniffer? This fascinating creature looks vastly different than any other creature we've ever seen on this earth. Once thought an extinct creature, the sniffer's eggs were excavated from a warm ocean ruin, allowing us to enjoy these ancient creatures to do. Wait, did you say ancient? Oh, buddy, you know what that means. Hello, internet. Welcome to Game Theory, the show that's always sniffing for clues and digging up lore.

And you guys have no idea how happy I am. to be doing this episode. I've written a number of Minecraft theories in my time, but this one is my Minecraftian white whale. I was so excited when the Trails and Tales update came out almost a year ago. Finally, an update that was going to focus on the ancient law of Minecraft. And what did Mojang give us? Some lines on our armor and pieces of broken pots. Yeah, it wasn't the most exciting update. It was certainly no warden, that's for sure. But we made the most of it. And we managed to use those broken pots and armor trims to figure out that the ancient builders weren't one collective group, but a number of tribes, each with their own specific resources.

However, there is one part of this update that we've purposefully ignored. One that I'm sure the keen miners and crafters among you have already noticed. The winner of the, completely legitimate mob vote of 2022, the Sniffer. And the winner is the Sniffer. This is a mob that apparently went extinct. But if you find an egg, you can hatch it, and from that point on, it will spend its time walking around,

sniffing for special seeds that it'll then dig up. It's a pretty unique mechanic. Plus, the idea of finding an egg rather than taming a wild mob is a fun idea. And in the past, whenever a new mob has been added, we've made sure to do a video covering it as soon as possible. So why, after almost a year, is there no video on this adorable thick boy? Well, because despite me trying over and over and over again, I couldn't figure out where it fits into the law that we've been building for the past four years. I knew it had to fit in somewhere, because Mojang were really keen on using one specific word during its reveal.

They can hatch this ancient mob and help it thrive. We also believe it has ancient knowledge to show. Look at them, they're practically mocking me. But no more! Because after almost a year of driving myself insane, much like a snifflet hatching from an egg, I finally cracked it. I figured out what the ancient mysteries this dump truck of a mob is hiding. So grab your excavation brushes, friends.

It's time to uncover the lost history of the Minecraft Sniffer. Let's start with finding these dang things. The only way to get your hands on a sniffer is to find one of their eggs buried in suspicious sand, specifically suspicious sand that you find in warm ocean ruins. These ruins belong to the fisherman tribe of ancient builders, as shown by the angler pottery shed that you can also find in the suspicious sand of these ruins. We've discussed these guys many times before on this channel. They would go on to cause the sea levels to rise, eventually flooding their tribe and leaving nothing behind but ocean monuments and these small ruins. But there are actually two other

shards that you can find from this tribe of fishermen, and one of them is especially interesting for our purposes today. It's called the snort sherd, and on it, we find a familiar creature, the sniffer. This proves that Mojan calling this thing an ancient mob was absolutely on purpose. Because the existence of this shirt tells us that the Sniffer was alive at the same time as the ancient builder fisherman tribe, as they were the ones who carved these images into the pots. But of course, this episode isn't just about proving they coexisted. We need to figure out why they coexisted.

Snifers aren't exactly known for catching fish. So, what use would they have been to a tribe of fishermen? Well, it turns out there are a couple of reasons. The first one is simple. As I mentioned earlier, the sniffer's main mechanic is to, well, sniff. By sniffing, they find things buried in the ground and they can dig them up. Kind of like truffle pigs, but instead of a tasty topping for your chips... Sorry, fries.

The sniffer instead digs up special seeds, torch flower seeds and pitcher plant seeds. These flowers honestly don't serve much purpose. They can be used to make dyes and they make nice decoration, but they aren't particularly useful, especially given how hard they are to get. However, there is one more use for the torch flower. specifically, something that would be useful for the fisherman tribe. By mixing torch flour into a suspicious stew recipe, you create a stew that gives you the night vision effect. Night vision is especially useful if you're wanting to explore ocean

monuments. And as the water levels begin to rise for the warm ocean and the neighboring cold ocean tribes, this would become a must-have ability. That cold ocean tribe, a tribe of pirates, would eventually be sent out to find the ingredients for a conduit, an item that would also give the tribe's night vision as well as underwater breathing. But in the meantime, the suspicious stew would take care of at least one of those issues. And what do we find on the sunken ships that belong to that tribe of pirates? That's right, Suspicious stew. Though that isn't the only thing we can learn from these special plants.

I mean, it'd be a bit weird for Mojang to introduce two new plants and for only one of them to be actually useful. I felt kind of bad for the pitcher plant. So, in classic Minecraft fashion, I kept digging. And in doing so, I struck gold or diamonds. Or is it? Netherite. But just like the mobs in the game, a lot of the plants from the overworld tend to be related to real world. plant, like roses, sunflowers, tulips. You get the idea. So, I took a look at what the real world counterparts are for the torch flower and the pitcher plant. The picture plant is easy enough

because it's just a plant that exists, though there are many varieties. Torch flowers on the other hand don't exist. At least not by that name. They resemble the Nifofia genus, commonly known as the Red Hot Poker or Torch Plant. I mean, come on, it's not rocket science. I think we can pretty much call that one confirmed. Both plants are native to the tropical and southern parts of the African continent, with torch plants mostly being in the mountainous south, and varieties of pitter plants being found in both Madagascar and the Seychelles. And this actually lines up with what we see in Minecraft. There's one more warm ocean pottery shirt that we are yet to talk about, and this one is called

Shelter. It depicts an acacia tree, a type of tree that grows in the savannah biomes of the overall, but they also grow in tropical regions like Africa, meaning that before they eventually flooded, the fisherman tribe lived in a savannah-style biome, near an ocean to allow for fishing, but also tropical enough in climate to allow the torch flower, picture plants and acacia trees to grow. And opening the door to their African inspirations also revealed another important detail about these plants. While they may not actually give you night vision in real life, in indigenous cultures, they were used as medicine. The pitcher plant was used to help with things like constipation, urinary tract infections, even diabetes, while the torch flower has been used to treat malaria, hepatitis B, eczema, female infertility, and a bunch more.

These types of medicinal plants were used specifically by traditional healers known as Inyanga, and people would travel four miles just for a chance to receive medical care from them, which means the warm ocean tribe wasn't just a tribe of fishermen, they were also a tribe of Inyanga, and so would use the sniffer to find the seeds for these medicinal plants. They then used them as a source of night vision in their suspicious stews for their explorers, or to heal any ancient build that needed help with their recent zombie bites. This is why the sniffers are depicted on their pottery shirts. Much like fishing, they were a cornerstone of their society.

And that's why all these years later, we can find their eggs buried in the ruins of the cities they used to help. However, while this is where the sniffers ended up, it isn't actually where they started. And if you think these guys are big now, well, oh, buddy, do I have a surprise for you. If you go underground in the overworld, you have a chance of finding generated structures known as fossils. They've been in the game since version 1.10, which was released all the way back in 2016. And yet, we've never been able to figure out what kind of creatures they relate to. The game files label these fossils as either fossil skull number 1 to 4 or fossil spine also number 1 to 4. These fossils are skeletons of dead creatures from a long forgotten time, an ancient time, if you will.

And at this point, you can probably see where I'm going with this. By using Spine 4 and Skull 3 together, it looks like the skeleton of a massive sniffer with big nostrils and a large barrel body. Now, I know what you're thinking. The sniffer is pretty big, but it's not that big. Whatever these skeletons are, they were massive beasts. Larger than the biggest mob in the game, the Ender Dragon. However, I do have an explanation for this. Domestication and natural selection.

Domestication is the process of taming an animal to keep as a pet or to use for work tasks like farming. Dogs were domesticated from a species of wolf known as the grey wolf from around 130,000 years ago. With time, the wolves became more obedient, more docile, and yes, smaller. This is because the smaller the creature, the easier it is to control and the less likely it is to overpower you. And so humans would specifically breed the small. smaller ones in order to pass down that trait. This is likely what happened to the sniffer. The smaller ones were tamed and chosen to breed because, let's be honest,

it's going to be pretty hard to keep control of a beast whose body alone is 5 metres tall. For reference, that's the total height of a giraffe. You make one of these things angry and it's going to stomp you out of existence. Now, natural selection and domestication takes a long time. To get the size difference between the sniffer fossil and the sniffer we have today, it would have taken thousands upon thousands of years. And that's something we haven't actually taught. about when covering the ancient builders. Normally for the sake of keeping these Minecraft

theories clear and concise, we tend to put all the events in quick succession. We go from the ancient builders going back in time to saving the world to dooming the world to dying out all within 25 minutes. But what we've never talked about is how long each of those eras took. For this example, the fishermen tribe created a bunch of greenhouse gases that caused the water levels to rise and eventually they all drowned. It sounds like it happened very quickly, but giant monuments aren't suddenly submerged overnight. From 1880 to 20, In 2020, sea levels have only risen 8 to 9 inches or about 20 to 23 centimetres. In 140 years, the water hasn't risen enough to drown a city.

However, given enough time, it very well could. Current predictions are that in the next 2,000 years, sea levels are likely to rise between 2 to 3 meters or 6.5 to 10 feet if temperatures go up by the expected 1.5 degrees Celsius or 2.7 degrees Fahrenheit. That is definitely going to put some of our cities underwater, but an ocean monument is 28 meters tall. For those to be underwater, it would mean temperatures rising by about 5 degrees Celsius or 9 degrees Fahrenheit. And even then, it would still take 10,000 years based on most predictions. And that would be the perfect amount of time for the ancient builders to breed the sniffers to be smaller and more manageable like we see today. There's just one teeny tiny flaw in this otherwise perfect solution. You can't find these particular fossils in the warm ocean biomes.

You find them in the deserts. So far, everything has been connecting them to the warm ocean. tribe. So why would their giant skeletons be found in a different biome? Well, as it usually does, it comes back to the troublemakers of the ancient builder world. The desert tribe, the scientists who dared to push the boundaries of the world they lived in. War motions are typically found next to deserts due to them sharing the same climate, making these tribes neighbors, likely sharing resources and technology, which would come in handy when the desert tribe began experimenting with potions that could help them breathe underwater. The desert tribe were also the ones who eventually crossed over into the nether,

trying to find a solution for the rising oceans that their neighbours had caused. And this is where, I believe, the final piece of the sniffer puzzle falls into place. Take a look at the sniffer again. Notice its colours. Animals typically adapt to their environment. And one way this happens is by changing the colour of their skin or fur to better blend in with their surroundings. This again happens through natural selection. The animals that blend in are much more likely to survive, allowing them to make and pass on those colourful genes. But the sniffers' colours don't blend in with any overworld biome.

The red and teal stick out like a sore thirt. against the various greens, blues and yellows. But you know what they do blend in with? The colours of the meather. Specifically, the red netherrack and teal warped nilium of the warped forest biome. And this is where I believe the sniffer originally came from. Nyleum is the nevers version of mycelium, and mycelium is a mass of branched wires that connect fungi together.

So, nilium is a fungus, or at least part of one, which would explain why the sniffer's back is a different color from its body. We see this kind of thing happen with animals like sloths, whose fur changes colour due to the algae growing in it, which just so happens to work as the perfect camouflage. The sniffer evolved its red fur to blend in with the nether rack of the nether, and then while living in the warped forests, the warped nilium fungus spread and attached itself to the sniffer's fur,

helping it blend in even more. The nether might also explain the whole six legs thing. Most overworld passive mobs are based on real world animals, but there are no mammals with six legs. It's just not how they're built. However, mobs in the never like to break this rule of realism. We've got walking pigs, giant ghosts, and passive mobs like the strider, and just look at them. They are far from normal.

A creature with six legs would feel right at home here. But the final nail in the sniffers' giant coffin comes back to the fossils. They don't just generate in the overworld. They also generate in the nether's soul sand valleys. These fossils are specifically of different parts of the body. Rather than spines and skulls, we have rib cages of varying sizes, which could relate back to our giant sniffer. After all, animals of the same species often come in a variety of sizes. But there is one fossil that is different.

Fossil 2 is labeled as a horizontal sternum. The sternum is a T-shaped flat bone that in mammals sits at the front of the ribcage. And it is the missing piece of our puzzle. When you place this sternum into the spine four that we found in the overworld, the spine and ribcage of the sniffer, it fits perfectly. These are the bones of the same creature, meaning the sniffer had to, at some point, be in the nether. So, if the nether is their rifle home based on their colour, physiology and fossils, why aren't there any seeds for them to dig up? The sniffer's only function is to dig for torch flower and pitcher plant seeds,

but if you take a sniffer back to the nether, they won't dig up anything, even if you place down more grass blocks. These seeds don't exist here, or maybe, it's that they don't exist here anymore. In another theory, we proved that the nether was not always the fiery landscape it is now. The existence of the basalt deltas showed us that there was once an ice age, as you need ice and sole soil for basalt to be created. This means water had to exist in the nether. So more traditional plants like torch flowers and picture plants could definitely have grown here.

We've also spoken about the biodiversity in the nether and how in the past there used to be many more species of flora and fauna like torch flowers and picture plants. But both the ice age and the biodiversity came to an end thanks to the piglands heating up the atmosphere by industrialising, creating weapons and armour to conquer more worlds. So we have evidence that these giant sniffers existed in the solver. sand valleys and so it would make sense that at one point in time these seeds and flowers used to exist in this part of the nether. But when the valleys dried up, there were no more seeds for the sniffers to eat, causing them to starve and die out, with their fossils being all that remained. The ones

that did survive would need to find a new biome, a biome with plant life that they might be able to live off, the forests of the nether. Due to their red fur, they would blend in really well with the crimson forest. However, the crimson forest is home to hoglins and piglins, both hostile mobs, with the latter being specifically known for hunting. Now, of course, these are giant sniffers, so you might think that piglins and hoglins aren't going to be much of a threat. But Neanderthals used to hunt massive creatures like woolly mammoths, and they would often target the much smaller offspring,

as they would be much easier to hunt or kill. And that could lead to extinction, which is why they ended up inhabiting the warped forest. The warped forest is home to the striders, a passive mob that was no threat to the snifflets. Plus, mobs like the hoglin are afraid of warped fungus, running away when within seven blocks of the stuff, it was the perfect place to hide. And over time, the warped nilium began to grow on their backs, further blending them into the forest.

But as we know, their journey isn't over yet. Eventually, the desert tribe entered the nether, discovering the magical properties that the mobs of this world could provide them. Things like blaze rots, magma balls and gars tears. And so, they wanted to see what the sniffer was capable of. Despite its size, the sniffer was a docile creature, and so they were able to lure it back to the overworld. They began selectively breeding them to make them more manageable, but during that time, they noticed the sniffers were clearly looking for something. And when they wandered a little further to patches of grass, they dug up seeds that no one had seen before. Grass was a rare sight in the desert and the sniffers can't dig up sand blocks.

However, there was plenty of grass in the neighbouring savannah-like warm ocean bio. So the desert tribe gave the sniffers to their neighbours the fishermen, to allow the sniffers to find more seeds and maybe find a use for them. They lived close to the water and had the right conditions for these plants to grow. And when they did, the fishermen began to experiment with them, learning of their medicinal and night vision properties, allowing them to create stews that would aid them in their efforts to see deep into the water as they fished, or create medicines to heal their wounds. The tribe became more than just fishermen.

They were now a tribe of healers. Sadly though, these advances didn't stop the rising tides. And while the fishermen and healers would eventually turn into the drown that we know today, with their knowledge of the plant's healing properties lost to time, the sniffers, weren't so lucky. They didn't transform into something else. They just drowned, leaving just a few eggs buried in the sand for us to find many years later. So, if you do find a sniffer, be kind to it, because now you know all the pain and suffering its ancestors went through just so you could have a nice looking house plant. And with that, I'm going to call this white whale officially conquered.

But hey, that's just a theory. A game theory. Thanks for watching.