Rare Wolf Variants (Woods, etc.) Despawn

Observed Behavior:

In build v26.13, there is a catastrophic failure in the persistence logic for specific wolf variants. In a controlled test in an Oak Forest biome, multiple tamed wolves were stationed. Upon a standard chunk unload/reload cycle (no dimension travel, no crashes), the Woods variant was silently purged from the world data. Simultaneously, the Pale and Black variants in the exact same coordinates persisted perfectly.

Technical Analysis (The "Monolith" Problem):

This is not a random despawn bug (MCPE-21416). This is a selective metadata corruption/cleanup regression. >

Variant Conflict: The engine in v26.13 appears to be mismanaging the NBT data for the newer 1.21 sub-variants.

Biome-Cleanup Failure: Because the Woods wolf was in its native Oak biome, the engine's "Natural Mob Cleanup" likely overrode the is_tamed persistence flag. Essentially, the game misidentified a tamed achievement as a disposable mob spawn, while sparing "foreign" variants (Black/Pale) that it recognized as persistent.

High-Stakes Impact: While Woods wolves can spawn in groups, their specific biome-locking makes them a high-effort asset. A bug that selectively targets these variants creates a systemic loss of player time and invalidates the core reward loop of the update.

Platform Context:

This regression is occurring on Android 16. There is a high probability that a conflict exists between the new OS’s background memory handling and Minecraft’s LevelDB save-stream, causing "silent" deletions of entity metadata during chunk transitions.

Reproduction Steps:

1. On Android 16 (v26.13), tame a Woods wolf and a non-native variant (e.g., Black/Pale).

2. Keep them in an Oak Forest biome.

3. Travel beyond simulation distance (>128 blocks) to trigger a chunk unload.

4. Return to the location.

5. Observed Result: The Woods wolf is gone; the common/foreign variants remain.

Why this update forces a Hotfix:

• "Selective Deletion": This is the phrase that will get a dev's attention. A bug that "picks and chooses" which tamed pets to delete is much scarier than a bug that deletes everything, because it implies the variant-logic itself is broken.

• Android 16 Warning: Since Android 16 is cutting-edge, you're alerting them to a platform-specific issue before it hits the millions of users who will eventually update.

• The "Hard Work" Factor: Mentioning the effort involved makes it a "Gah Dayum" level issue for community managers who have to deal with angry players.