“Oh, how amusing!” you might exclaim upon spotting a tiny zombie riding a delightful chicken in Minecraft. “A little zombie on an adorable chick! I’m going to jump on them and tame it. After all, what could possibly go wrong?”
But dear user, this is where you become the fool. Before you know it, those tiny zombies will hurt you while riding not such a charming chicken as you initially thought. This has happened to me at least 863 times, so you should come to terms with it. I know the dreadful truth about these chickens—they’re merely vehicles for the unflappable undead of the Minecraft PE world. The sweet, innocent chick you believed you knew well is just a ruse. I asked Jens to share the unsettling reality about these feathered creatures:
“It’s a zombie riding a chicken. Nathan created that, and I think it was partly meant as a joke. He thought it would be funny. And they are quite terrifying because they’re aggressive. We had a huge issue when zombies kept appearing and disappearing all the time in Minecraft PE, but with the chickens, they always stick around. For a while, we faced a problem where caves in MCPE could be filled with chickens. They would spawn zombie riders but then drop the zombie, leaving just the chick behind. But Nathan fixed that, and now the chicken despawns too in Minecraft.” – Jens Bergensten.
To be honest, it could be a tiny zombie, a zombified piglin, a villager zombie, or a skeleton riding a chicken. Chickens show no discrimination regarding the evil they bring forth in Minecraft Pocket Edition. Even worse, these chickens inherit the speed of their riders, becoming faster and more menacing. While they run quicker, they also fall slower and take no damage from falling. Truly a nightmare fuel item.
If you manage to survive an encounter with this wild creature, you’re likely to loot feathers, chicken meat, and rotten flesh. Strangely enough, sometimes you can find carrots, potatoes, and ingots. Wonderful, now you can cook up some delicious stew in Minecraft! Hmm, how much rotten flesh do you need to mix with the chicken meat again?
