My family has recently been sending more audio messages to each other than we ever previously did, as my daughter has been making up a lot of songs lately, and we like sharing them with each other.
My parents asked me where those go when you save them from Messages, and I realized I didn’t actually know the answer. I started searching around the internet, and there is a TON of garbage articles out there that are 1. wrong, and 2. usually trying to sell you some scammy iPhone recovery utility.
So here you go - They save to voice memos. Why? I’m not entirely sure, but that’s where they seem to go.