Chickens when in water won't swim towards you but still track you when you lure them with seeds.
I don't know if that applies to other mobs too.
The only other mob i've tested it with are Cows. They seem to swim towards you but pretty pretty slow.
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Confirmed for 14w27b (MC-60226).
It appears that this affects hostile mobs as well while they are trying to follow you in water

Seems to be a duplicate (not just related) of MC-48616, since that issue describes mobs swimming slowly after changing direction (likely what's happening here).

Does this still affect the current version 1.8/1.8.1?

Is this still an issue in the most recent versions (currently that is 1.10.2, or 16w42a) of Minecraft? If so, please update the affected versions and help us keeping this ticket updated from time to time. If you are the owner/reporter of this ticket, you can modify the affected version(s) yourself.
Is this still a concern in the current Minecraft version Minecraft 1.7.8 or later? If so, please update the affected versions in order to best aid Mojang ensuring bugs are still valid in the latest releases/pre-releases.