Java Edition:Zombie Variant Holding Glow Ink Sac

The zombie, zombie villager, husk, and drowned cannot pick up glow ink sacs currently, even if they have CanPickUpLoot set to true.

They lost the ability to pick up this item in 1.17.1 Pre-release 1 because glow ink sacs can occur without player interaction and so many zombie variants could build up and not despawn with the item.^[1]

Obtaining

From 21w03a (when the glow ink sac was added) until 1.17, zombie variants that spawned with the CanPickUpLoot tag set to true could pick up the glow ink sac. However, glow squids did not spawn until 21w13a, making this the first snapshot where the glow ink sac was obtainable. Therefore, without downgrading, the start version is 21w13a, and can be downgraded to earlier versions as well.

Variants

Many variants are obtainable. The different mobs this applies to are zombies, zombie villagers, husks, and drowned. All variants come in a baby and baby chicken jockey variant as well. Other NBT that they can have includes being a leader, wearing armor (including pumpkins/jack o'lanterns on halloween), and being left-handed (causing the glow ink sac to be in the other hand).

The glow ink sac stack thrown to the mob can be any count from 1 to 64. This count cannot be altered afterwards making 64 unique discontinued mobs in this respect. The count is only semi-observable because to determine the quantity of glow ink sacs the player must kill the mob and count how many drop.