Few things are as lovely as flowers, with their bright colors, delicate forms, and soft scents. But if it weren’t for animals, most flowers wouldn’t exist. The reason is that animals help flowering plants reproduce.

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Flowering plants form seeds by combining male and female cells, through a process called pollination. The reproductive parts are in the flowers. At the center of the flower is a vase-shaped post called the pistil. This is the female part, and it’s where the ovules, or eggs, are produced.

Around the pistil is a ring of slender stalks called stamens. These are the male parts, and it’s where the pollen develops. When the pollen grains are ripe, they must be transferred from stamen to pistil. When this occurs, the pollen grains fertilize the ovules, which then develop into seeds that will form new plants.

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If pollen is transferred from the stamen to the pistil of the same flower, the process is called self-pollination. But not every plant can fertilize itself. In many plant species, some flowers contain only pistils and others have only stamens. Even when flowers contain only stamens and pistils, they often can’t self-pollinate – because this usually isn’t the best method of reproduction. Cross pollination combines the pollen of one plant with the ovules of another plant of the same kind, mixes the genetic material of the two plants. The result is usually stronger plants and better fruit.

And this is where animals help – they carry the pollen from one plant to another. They don’t know they’re helping. Usually they go to the flowers to drink the sweet nectar inside or to eat the pollen itself. But in the process, their bodies pick up a few grains of pollen, which are then carried to the next flower they visit.

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Bees are the most famous pollinators – and the busiest, visiting flower after flower after flower. You’ll often see hives of honeybees set beneath the trees in orchards, placed there specifically so that the bees will pollinate the fruit trees. Beetles, moths and butterflies are other pollinating insects.

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Some birds help, too – tiny humming birds hover in the air as they drink the nectar from a flower, and then dart off to the next. There are even small mammals that help pollinate flowers. They include bats and the tiny Australian honey possum. These animals and others like them are so important to plants that they are actually the reason that flowers even exist. The bright petals, wonderful scents, and sweet-tasting nectar of flowers are there for one purpose: to attract animals that will help the plants reproduce.