Ever played minecraft – of course you have!

Ever been blown up by a creeper? – of course you have!

Ever wondered what seemingly “stupid” evolution made creepers suicidal? – well I have!

Its just seems a bit stupid really that evolution, survival of the fittest etc, leads to creatures which blow themselves up at first sight of a threat…. but is this as silly as it sounds?

Now if we look at a creeper as a solitary creature, such as a bird, or a tortoise, or a duck etc then yes, blowing yourself up is a completely idiotic thing to do. The only possible use for it I can think of is if it releases your sperm into the atmosphere. Well maybe that’s the case? But I doubt it, because in that case a creeper would only detonate during mating in location to a female creeper, but evidence shows that creepers ignore all creatures (other creepers, skeletons, spiders, pigs, cows etc) and only pay attention to, seek to destroy and explode near humans. This puts the semen explosion mating hypothesis out of the window unless creepers are mating with humans, and as far as I can tell they aren’t, so we shall ignore this theory.

But let’s say we look at creepers as social colonial creatures. Now I’m not talking about the Portuguese Man-of-War, or corals, type of colonial where all bodies are actually linked, I’m talking about creatures which act as a society. This is that they do not live independently for the good of themselves, but work together for the good of the whole. Well suddenly suicide makes more sense. But we need evidence, TO THE ANIMAL KINGDOM!

Insects are a damn good place to start, and finish, because they are good example and bad examples would be pointless. Bee’s. Everyone knows what happens if you piss a bee off, it stings you, it dies. Well technically most bee’s actually don’t have a suicidal barbed sting, but some do! And those ones die protecting their colony, their family…. but I need more evidence.

Let’s look at another social insect, ants. Ants are utterly awesome in every way, until they are a pest in your home, or you get stung by one, or one explodes on you. Wait, what? Exploding ants? Yeh, you head me, exploding ants.

Some species of carpenter ants have special glands full of toxic substances and glue, which when threatened they rupture killing themselves but (hopefully) trapping and killing nearby intruders/threats.

Let’s take a look at a creepers suicide and see what we can relate. When threatened, and when a creeper gets close it explodes. In fact there is an audible hiss before the explosion. This must be some form of chemical reaction prior to the explosion. Like the exploding ants, the purpose of this explosion is to kill any threats, and indeed if caught off guard and without armour a creeper blast can be fatal. This to me, with the abundance of creepers, especially underground, implicates that creepers are colonial creatures and that the creepers we often see are the worker partition of the colony, gathering food, constructing tunnels and… and…

Oh god that means there’s a Queen creeper!