Zombies Eat Animals

Zombies hunt animals for food. Eating meat restores their health, helps them grow stronger over time, and can now make them more dangerous in the long run.

This mod turns zombies into scavengers and predators that interact with the world instead of wandering aimlessly.

Features

Zombies Hunt Animals

Zombies will search for nearby animals and attempt to hunt them.

Typical targets include creatures that drop edible meat, such as:

Cow
Pig
Sheep
Chicken
Rabbit

Animals in the wilderness are no longer completely safe at night.

Zombies that survive long enough will repeatedly hunt for food.

Automatic Target Detection

The mod automatically detects valid prey.

If a creature's loot table can drop food items that zombies can eat, zombies will treat that creature as a hunting target.

This means many modded animals will work automatically without additional configuration.

Zombies Eat Meat

When animals die and drop food items, zombies can walk toward the dropped items and eat them.

Supported foods include:

Raw meat
Cooked meat
Rotten flesh

Eating food restores zombie health and contributes to long-term growth.

Zombies Can Grow Stronger

Zombies that keep feeding may gradually increase their maximum health.

Over time, well-fed zombies that survive in the wild may become significantly tougher than normal zombies.

The growth cap is configurable.

Persistent and Rewarding Zombies

Since 1.6.0, you can use configs to enable the following gameplay mechanics:

Zombies can be made persistent after eating, preventing natural despawn
Zombies can be configured to drop more loot based on how much health growth they gained from feeding
The conversion ratio between gained max health and bonus loot is also configurable

Rotten Flesh Bonus

Eating rotten flesh may grant a temporary Resistance effect, allowing zombies to become harder to kill for a short time.

Zombie Horse Safety Option

A new config option allows zombies to ignore zombie horses as attack targets.

This is useful for modpacks or servers that want to avoid unwanted zombie-vs-zombie-horse behavior.

Gameplay Impact

This behavior creates a more dynamic world:

Animals may be hunted by zombies at night
Zombies roaming the wilderness may grow stronger over time
Unprotected farms may lose livestock
The death of a zombie may strengthen a nearby zombie
Long-surviving zombies can become more persistent and more rewarding to kill (enabled through config)
Monsters interact more naturally with the environment

Configuration

Several aspects of zombie behavior can be configured.

Hunting Behavior

alwaysHunting Zombies will always attempt to hunt animals. (Still respects hunting cooldown and other limits)
berserkerHunting Enables a special mode that bypasses normal hunting limits
huntCooldownTicks Cooldown between successful hunts
huntCapForADay Maximum hunts per zombie within one Minecraft day
huntCapForADayTotal Maximum hunts by all zombies in the same level per day
huntFollowDistanceFactor Multiplier applied to zombie follow range when searching for animals
doNotAttackZombieHorses If true, zombies do not attack zombie horses

Eating and Growth Behavior

enableEatFoodItems Whether zombies can eat dropped food items
recoveryPerNutrition Health restored from eating food
maxHealthBoostCap Maximum health increase zombies can gain from feeding
maxHealthBoostCapHardModeAddition Additional health cap applied in Hard difficulty
eatCooldownTicks Cooldown between eating actions
rottenFleshGiveResistance Rotten flesh may grant a temporary resistance effect

Loot and Reward Bahavior

zombiesBecomePersistentAfterEating If true, zombies that have eaten meat do not despawn naturally
zombiesDropMoreLoot If true, zombies drop more loot based on how much max health they gained from feeding
hpLootRatio If the value is X, every X × basic max health gained is converted into bonus loot drops

Datapack Support

The mod uses a tag-based system to determine which foods zombies can eat.

Zombie Food Tag

zombieseatanimals:zombie_food

Items inside this tag are considered edible by zombies.

Example datapack path:

data/zombieseatanimals/tags/items/zombie_food.json

Example:

{
  "replace": false,
  "values": [
    "minecraft:beef",
    "minecraft:cooked_beef",
    "minecraft:porkchop",
    "minecraft:cooked_porkchop"
  ]
}

Any item added to this tag will be treated as food that zombies can eat.

Entity Target Control

The mod also provides entity type tags to control which creatures zombies will hunt.

These tags allow modpack authors to override the automatic detection system.

Force Hunting Targets

zombieseatanimals:zombie_target_animal

Entities in this tag will always be considered valid hunting targets, regardless of their loot tables.

Prevent Hunting

zombieseatanimals:not_zombie_target_animal

Entities in this tag will never be hunted by zombies, even if they drop edible food.

Target Selection Priority

When deciding whether a creature should be hunted, the mod applies the following rules:

If the creature is in not_zombie_target_animal, it will never be hunted
If the creature is in zombie_target_animal, it will always be hunted
Otherwise, the mod checks whether the creature's loot table can drop an item contained in the zombie_food tag

This design allows the system to work automatically for most creatures while still giving modpack authors full control.

Modpack Integration

The mod is designed to work well in modded environments.

In most cases, modpack authors only need to add edible items to the zombie_food tag. Creatures that drop those foods will automatically become potential prey.

Entity tags are optional and only needed when explicit control is desired.