Celebrate the wild hearts of our natural world this Valentine’s Day

Nowadays, it's rare we stop and look around. Screens hold our focus. We scroll through curated feeds, double tap on our favourite food and places, and swipe… swipe… swipe on faces. But love is written into the very fabric of the natural world - in wild places where patterns emerge, if we just stop to notice.

This Valentine's Day, WWF invites you to look up, look out, and see what's been there all along; that love is all around. 

The red-pink petals from the Asian bleeding-heart dangle like love lockets, opening to reveal tiny tear-drop white petals on the inside. Native to both northeast China and Korean peninsula, found in shaded woodlands, these delicate blooms appear each spring, nature leaving its own love notes in the undergrowth. ^[1]

With wings that beat (up to 200 times per second!) ^[2] in the shape of a heart, hummingbirds show devotion by returning to the same flowers often, their beaks dusted with pollen they'll then share with other blooms. ^[3] It's an affair of mutual survival - the bird gets its nectar, the flower gets a future.  

This jaguar wears its heart on its sleeve (or flank) – quite literally. Recently, a WWF camera trap in Bolivia (installed for monitoring) revealed a visiting jaguar - marked with a perfect heart facing up on its body. It shows how strength and tenderness can co-exist, and that single image has quickly become a symbol of peace for the community living close by too.

Between the rise and fall of tides, something sweet takes shape in the UK’s saltmarsh. Heart-shaped pools form between the moon’s motions. They will disappear shortly, swallowed back into the sea. But when held briefly by the marsh, they catch the sky and reflect the light – nature’s own temporary delight. 

Despite being one of the largest butterflies in the world, this heart-shaped, iridescent blue Morpho butterfly will only fly for a matter of weeks. ^[4] But in that time, it can follow the course of a river, feed on the juices of fruit, and feel sunlight on its paper-thin wings. Its time on Earth is brief but beautiful, like many great love stories. 

Coral cities like this are the collaboration of generations of coral polyps – millions of tiny living creatures working together to provide food, shelter and breeding grounds for countless species from tiny fish to giant turtles. It’s a heart-shaped haven, corals collectively playing host to 25% of all marine life, yet at threat from rising ocean temperatures that cause bleaching, destructive fishing, pollution from land, coastal development, and shipping. 

These two swans know nothing of the famous ballet their species inspired. But they know the dance – without a platform, a stage or an audience – they put on a private show, two drifters who found each other on still water and decided to stay a while. 

Wild hearts are everywhere. And in seeing them, we might remember that we too are part of this. We belong to these wild, loving systems, and we always have.