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?