Silverfish

Silverfish

Health points	8 ()
Attack strength	1 ()
Size	Height: 0.3 Blocks Width: 0.4 Blocks
Spawn	After mining infested blocks or from spawners in strongholds.
First appearances	See History
Drops	None
Experience	5
Sounds	Idle Hurt Death
Internal ID	JE: 60 BE: 39
Entity ID	silverfish

Silverfish are small, bug-like hostile mobs.

Drops

Silverfish have no drops other than 5 experience when killed by a player or tamed wolf.

Spawning

Monster egg blocks

Silverfish spawn from broken monster eggs, which generate in strongholds, igloos with basements, woodland mansion fake portal rooms and mountains biomes. Silverfish will not spawn if the block is broken with Silk Touch.

Monster spawners

When spawning from monster spawners, they can only spawn in light level 11 or lower, except on top of stone and its variants, where they can spawn at any light level. They also cannot spawn within a 5 block distance of any player.

Behavior

Silverfish are the second smallest mobs in Minecraft, after the endermite; their height is less than that of a slab. Because of this, they take suffocation damage from standing on soul sand.

Silverfish have the ability to "call" other silverfish in the area upon being hit. These silverfish have the ability to see through walls, and will pathfind until they reach the player.

When idle, silverfish will enter a nearby stone block, transforming it into a monster egg.

When they suffer poison damage or damage inflicted by the player, and survive, they may cause other silverfish within a 21×11×21 area to break out of their monster eggs. You can therefore prevent other silverfish from appearing by killing them in one shot.

Silverfish, being arthropods, are weak against weapons with the Bane of Arthropods enchantment.

Data values

See also: Chunk format

Silverfish have entity data associated with them that contain various properties of the mob. Their entity ID is silverfish.

• 
  Entity data
  • Tags common to all entities see Template:Nbt inherit/entity/template
  • Tags common to all mobs see Template:Nbt inherit/mob/template

Advancements

Main article: Advancements

Icon	Advancement	In-game description	Parent	Actual requirements (if different)	Internal ID
	Adventure	Adventure, exploration, and combat	—	Kill any entity, or be killed by any entity.	minecraft:adventure/root
	Monster Hunter	Kill any hostile monster	Adventure	Kill one of these 24 mobs. Other mobs are ignored for this advancement.	minecraft:adventure/kill_a_mob
	Monsters Hunted	Kill one of every hostile monster	Monster Hunter	Kill each of these 24 mobs. Other mobs may be killed, but are ignored for the advancement.	minecraft:adventure/kill_all_mobs

History

Java Edition Beta
1.7					The texture (silverfish.png) was added, though the mob itself was not yet present.
1.8			Pre-release		Added silverfish.
Java Edition
1.0.0			Beta 1.9 Prerelease 3		Reduced silverfish health from 20 () to 8 ().
					Silverfish monster spawners are now found in End portal rooms in strongholds.
			RC1		Added sounds for silverfish. Before the update, silverfish used spider sounds.
1.3.1			12w26a		Silverfish will now summon silverfish from nearby monster eggs whenever they take Poison damage.
1.7.2			?		Silverfish can rarely spawn inside cobblestone or stone brick blocks.
1.8			14w06a		Silverfish will now pathfind, alert other silverfish of the player when hit, and stop occasionally before moving again (similar to most other mobs).
1.9			15w43a		Silverfish can now be spawned from broken monster eggs in the basements of igloos.
1.11			16w32a		Changed entity ID from Silverfish to silverfish.
			16w36a		Can now spawn from broken infested cobblestone in the fake portal room of woodland mansions.
Pocket Edition Alpha
0.9.0			build 1		Added silverfish.
0.12.1			build 12		No longer makes sounds while moving.
Legacy Console Edition
TU5	CU1	1.0	Patch 1		Added silverfish.

Issues

Issues relating to "Silverfish" are maintained on the bug tracker. Report issues there.

Trivia

• In real life, silverfish are small, relatively harmless, wingless arthropods that are often found in dark areas in buildings and the wooden pilings of seaside piers and trees. They are infamous for damaging paper-based products. During cold temperatures they are known to enter a sort of "hibernation" by expelling most of the water in their body. During this state they greatly resemble small stones or gravel, likely inspiring their Minecraft counterparts.
• Although they can enter cracked, mossy and chiseled stone bricks, which are data values of the original stone brick block, they cannot enter granite, diorite, andesite, or their polished variants even though these are also data values of a block they can enter.
• If the gamerule mobGriefing is disabled, silverfish will not enter stone and its variants.

Gallery

• 

  A silverfish.

• 

  A swarm of silverfish.

• 

  Silverfish spawner room in a stronghold.

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  The same room, with a lit portal.

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  A silverfish riding a minecart.

• 

  Many silverfish in a village. (Click for animation)

• 

  A giant stone silverfish as seen in the 13w26a banner.

See also

• Endermite
• Monster Egg

Entities

View at: Template:Entities/content [edit]