Zombie horsemen can occasionally spawn holding something other than an iron spear

Zombie horsemen can spawn holding any of the items that normal zombies have a chance to spawn holding, namely an iron sword or iron shovel. This may be intended, but the 25w41a changelog does say

Zombie Horses now has a chance to spawn in plains and savanna biome types, with a zombie rider holding an iron spear

so I wanted to confirm what the intended behavior is.

To reproduce

1. Create a new creative superflat world with the default preset

2. Set the difficulty to hard (although I’m not sure if it matters)

3. /gamerule doDaylightCycle false

4. /time set midnight

5. /gamerule commandBlockOutput false

6. Set up a repeating command block facing sideways with teleport @e[type=!player,type=!minecraft:zombie_horse,type=!zombie] ~ -1000 ~

7. Place a chain command block after it with teleport @e[type=minecraft:zombie_horse,distance=20..256] ~ ~1 ~

8. Place another chain command block after that one with execute as @e[type=zombie,nbt={OnGround:1b},distance=..256] run teleport @s ~ -1000 ~

9. Place a final chain command block after that one with execute as @e[type=minecraft:zombie_horse] on passengers unless entity @s[nbt={equipment:{mainhand:{id:"minecraft:iron_spear"}}}] run effect give @s minecraft:glowing infinite 0 true

10. Power the repeating command block

11. /tick sprint 100d

12. Run /teleport @e[type=zombie_horse,nbt={Passengers:[{id:"minecraft:zombie",equipment:{mainhand:{id:"minecraft:iron_spear"}}}]}] ~ -1000 ~ periodically when the number of regular zombie horseman spawns has become annoying
    ❌ A glowing zombie horseman holding something other than an iron spear will eventually appear

13. /tick sprint stop

Note

I would not really mind if this is intended, I’m more just curious how Mojang feels about it.