Panda vs Polar bear in Minecraft: How different are the two mobs?

Minecraft has a lot of different mobs, and new ones are being added with almost every major update. Polar bears and pandas are both unique mobs that have a similar-looking model in the game.

Pandas are more recent than polar bears. They were introduced to the game with the 1.14 update released on April 23, 2019. Polar bears were added to Minecraft as part of the 1.10 Frostburn update on June 8, 2016.

Minecraft mob comparison: Panda versus Polar bear

Spawn location

Polar bears and pandas are both overworld mobs and do not spawn in any other dimension. When exploring the jungle biome, players will come across pandas. They spawn a lot more often in the bamboo jungle biome as bamboo grows in abundance.

Polar bears are one of the few animals that live in the cold regions. They spawn in snowy tundra, ice spikes, snowy mountains, and both regular and deep-frozen variants of ocean biomes. Polar bears are often seen with their cubs because they spawn in groups of two, and one of them is always a cub.

Behavior

Both mobs behave quite similarly (Image via Minecraft)

Adult variants of both of these mobs are neutral, which means they will attack the player when provoked. Polar bears are always hostile towards foxes. If the player attacks a polar bear cub, all other adult polar bears in a certain range will immediately act aggressively towards the player.

Drops

Items dropped by the two mobs (Image via Minecraft)

Like the majority of mobs in the game, both pandas and polar bears will drop items when killed. However, the items dropped by them are very different.

In Java Edition, pandas will always drop 1 bamboo, and in Bedrock Edition, they can drop 0-2 bamboo. Polar bears, upon death, will leave behind 0-2 raw cod or raw salmon. The chances of it dropping cod are significantly higher than salmon.

Killing the baby variant of polar bears will yield no items. There's a one-in-a-seven-hundred chance of a baby panda dropping a slimeball.

Breeding

Pandas can breed, but polar bears cannot. To breed two pandas, there needs to be eight bamboos growing in a five-block radius of them. Then, players need to give both of them bamboo to make them enter love mode. When these conditions are met, pandas will breed and give birth to a baby panda.