What are the benefits of making animals friendly?

While exploring a planet, I came across a couple of creatures that let me get relatively close to them. I was able to feed them Carbon and interact with them, which then displayed a little happy face symbol above the creature.

While I thought this was cool that you could do this, I then noticed one of them standing in a certain spot making noises with a question mark icon above it. I walked over and saw that it found something on the ground and I was able to pick it up, which turned out to be a more rare material.

While walking around some more, I noticed that these 2 specific creatures I interacted with were following me around and wanted to be fed again.

Which leads me to my question; what all happens when you feed different creatures? What advantages do you get, as a player, making the creatures happy?

Solution 1:

It's always fun to feed the animals. You can feed them Carbon, Iron, I've even had to feed Heridium to one. They get a little happy face, they make cute noises, they follow you around. But you're right, otherwise there doesn't seem to be much use in doing so.

But! Sometimes, the animals will lead you to resources. They will run around a bit, find a spot, make a lot of noise, and get a Magnifying Glass icon above them. If you run to them, there will be a small chunk of some ore or isotope on the ground in front of them. The rarity seems to vary slightly; I've found Chrysonite, which I have yet to find naturally generated, but the animals have also found Gold and Emeril.

This seems to be the only purpose of feeding creatures, so far as I have experienced. I don't know if it's possible to feed unfriendly species and tame them, as whenever they attack me I usually panic-kill them, but it could be worth looking into.