It is the unofficial soundtrack of basketball, a noise consistently heard but rarely considered — rubber-soled shoes squeaking on the hardwood.
Squeaks are the background rhythm to the game. But that sound is also one of the enduring mysteries of sports, and presents a question that gets scientists talking: Why do basketball shoes squeak?
To understand, it may help to consider violins and the California spiny lobster.
Sheila Patek, a biologist at Duke University, is an expert in spiny lobsters, among other oddities of the animal kingdom, and several years ago discovered that some species of the clawless crustaceans do something utterly unusual.