A study has 'listened in' to the fascinating courtship displays of Fiddler crabs using geophones. The findings provide new insights into how the animals communicate effectively on the noisy seashore.

A decade ago, I stood on the muddy banks of the Great Marsh, a salt marsh an hour north of Boston, and pulled a thumb-sized crab with an absurdly large claw out of a burrow. I was looking at a fiddler ...