Meet Seungah Chung, the US eighth-grader who used 200 ants to discover landmark navigation

Seungah Chung (Image Credit: Society For Science) Most of us have seen ants marching across the ground without giving them much thought. Seungah Chung saw something different. She wondered how such tiny creatures, with brains no larger than a pinhead, manage to find food and then make their way back home without getting lost.That question led the eighth-grade student from Beverly Vista Middle School in California to design an experiment involving 200 red harvester ants and a maze. According to the Society for Science, her research found that red harvester ants don't simply wander until they reach their destination; they rely on visual landmarks to help guide them. The project earned Seungah a place among the finalists in the 2025 Thermo Fisher Scientific Junior Innovators Challenge, one of the leading STEM competitions for middle school students in the US.A simple observation became a science projectSeungah's interest in ants began with everyday observations. Watching them move in neat lines made her curious about what was happening behind the scenes. Scientists have long known that ants leave chemical trails that other ants can follow, but Seungah wanted to know whether that was t...