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.
Linked issues
is duplicated by 4
Comments 6
Confirmed for 14w27b (MC-60226).
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).
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.