This story was originally published by Grist, and it is republished here with permission. Sign up for Grist’s weekly newsletter here.
Think back to the last concert you went to. Now replace the music that rang through the venue with an erratic series of pops, muffled staccatos, distorted taps, and sudden clicks. Not one sound is quite distinguishable from the other, all blending together in a medley of unsynchronized noise.
Except, instead of musicians, what you’re hearing is a mass of underground invertebrates. And they’re putting on an unorthodox show for the handful of humans who know where, and how, to tune in—a complex symphony of vibrations and pulses that relay the state of the very soils these organisms are moving within.
