A Curious Collection of Wild Companions

Heartwarming, surprising, and downright bizarre creature connections
 
Relationships can be complicated, and it’s no different in the wild. Meet 60 dynamic duos across the plant and animal kingdoms—from “aww” to “eek”!

The Eltham copper butterfly and the Notoncus ant are BFFs for life. The ants lovingly raise the butterflies’ caterpillar babies, while feasting on the sweet substance the caterpillars produce. Everybody wins in this prime example of mutualism.

The pseudoscorpian is a total freeloader. When it wants to get around, it boards the back of the giant harlequin beetle, in a one-sided setup called commensalism. 

Parasitism is where things get spooky. Learn how the green-banded broodsac (a type of flatworm) first invades the eyestalk of the amber snail, then tricks it into getting eaten by a bird—inside which the broodsac will grow up. Yikes!

Award-winning author and illustrator Sami Bayly shows us a whole world of wild companions like these—many endangered—and reminds us that we're all inseparable.

Publisher’s Note: A Curious Collection of Wild Companions was previously published in Australia as The Illustrated Encyclopaedia of Peculiar Pairs in Nature.