The Transportation Security Administration (TSA) made a rather unusual discovery while giving someone a patdown search at Newark Liberty International Airport last Friday after the passenger pulled a turtle out of the front of their pants.
Usually accustomed to finding firearms, knives, and drugs, one can only imagine the look on the face of the TSA when the passenger handed over the roughly five-inch turtle that he had tried to smuggle through the security checkpoint.
The TSA was first alerted to something suspect when the passenger passed through the body scanner, activating an alarm for a potentially concealed weapon around the groin area.
The unlucky TSA officer who was assigned the job of patting down the passenger found a larger bulge than anticipated around the man’s groin and asked the passenger if he was hiding something.
At this point, the man voluntarily reached into his pants and pulled out the small turtle, which was wrapped in a blue blanket.
The passenger claimed the turtle was a red-ear slider turtle. According to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the red-ear slider isn’t native to the United States, but the species is controlled because it is considered an invasive species that competes with native turtles for food and habitat.
Praising the TSA officer who had to search the passenger, Federal Security Director for New Jersey, Thomas Carter, commented “I commend our officer who conducted the pat-down in a very professional manner in an effort to resolve the alarm.”
“We have seen travelers try to conceal knives and other weapons on their person, in their shoes and in their luggage, however I believe this is the first time we have come across someone who was concealing a live animal down the front of his pants.”
Carter added: “As best as we could tell, the turtle was not harmed by the man’s actions.”
The passenger was temporarily detained while Port Authority Police questioned the man, which ended up with his missing his flight. The passenger was then escorted out of the airport, although there’s no word yet on whether the man faces potential criminal charges.
While relatively unusual in the United States, it’s not unheard of for airport security officers to discover passengers trying to smuggle exotic animals on international flights.
In December 2023, for example, a Taiwanese man was busted at Bangkok’s Suvarnabhumi Airport after trying to smuggle a prairie dog and two otters in his pants.
The 22-year-old tourist was stopped by security officers before he could board his flight to Taipei after they became suspicious about the unusually large bulge in his pants that was wiggling around.
The man was initially subjected to a series of scans that indicated something was amiss and then customs officials strip-searched him, revealing the two Asian small-clawed otters and a prairie dog that he had tried to hide in his underwear.
And last November, a 28-year-old Korean man was arrested by police in Peru after he was caught trying to smuggle 325 tarantulas, 110 centipedes, and nine bullet ants on a 12-hour flight from the Peruvian capital, Lima, to Paris.
The incident occurred on November 8, 2024, when the unnamed Korean suspect tried to get through the airport security checkpoint ahead of his Air France flight to Paris. As the man passed through the metal detector arch, security officers noticed that his chest was bulging and stopped him for a secondary search.
When the man was asked to lift up his top, the officers were stunned to find hundreds of spiders, centipedes, and ants in Ziploc bags and small plastic containers strapped to two sashes that the man was wearing across his body.
