TSA’s 2025 Most Unusual Finds List Includes Animals in Underwear and a Fake Bomb
Some people will go to extreme lengths to sneak verboten things through airport checkpoints — like the man who disassembled a 9mm handgun and hid its pieces inside a boot and a LEGO box at Newark Liberty International Airport. Or the passenger who attempted to conceal pieces of their gun in two jars of peanut butter at JFK in 2023. Or the person who tried to bring a chainsaw on a plane in 2021. The list goes on and on.
These concealments happen so frequently that the TSA has made it an annual tradition to release the weird things it snags out of people’s luggage. The agency recently released its list of 2025’s top 10 unusual finds, which range from bullets in food to animals in underwear.
Topping the list was a replica of a pipe bomb discovered in a passenger’s carry-on bag at Boise Airport in May 2025. TSA had to summon an explosives expert to determine if the device—which consisted of PVC pipes, wires, and wooden blocks wrapped in brown paper reading “C4”—was real. According to the passenger, the faux explosive was used for training purposes.
“Realistic replicas of explosives are not allowed in checked or carry-on bags,” TSA’s Federal Security Director for Idaho James Spies said in a statement. “Our expertly trained officers take no risks when they screen a bag and see an image that could be an explosive. We’re grateful that in this case, the items were not intended to harm anyone.”
Next on the list were incidents at two separate airports where passengers tried to bring live turtles through checkpoints in their clothing. In March, a man was stopped at Newark after going through the checkpoint. A TSA officer patting him down “determined that there was something concealed in the area of the man’s groin,” officials said. “When asked if there was something hidden in his pants, the man … reached down the front of his pants and pulled out a live turtle that was wrapped in a small blue towel.”
The next incident occurred in July 2025 at Miami International Airport, where a woman used a similarly intimate area to conceal turtles: During a patdown, the “passenger divested two turtles from her breast area,” according to the TSA X account. She’d secreted the reptiles in her bra, one wrapped in plastic, one in medical tape. Unfortunately, one of the reptiles involved in the incident died.
“OK friends, please—and we cannot emphasize this enough—stop hiding animals in weird places on your body and then trying to sneak them through airport security,” the agency said in a post on LinkedIn. “No, really.”
There were plenty of other bizarre things people tried to sneak through TSA in 2025, including bullets in Nesquik (Miami again) and a knife in a car seat at Dallas Fort Worth. You can see the full list below.
TSA’s Top 10 Unusual Finds of 2025
- Explosive replicas — Boise Airport (BOI)
- Turtles in pants and bra — Newark Liberty International Airport (EWR) and Miami International Airport (MIA)
- Razor blades in clothes — Denver International Airport (DEN)
- Drugs in shoes — Hawaii’s Kona International Airport (KOA)
- Knife in a knee brace — Illinois’s Quad Cities International Airport (MLI)
- Pills in a shampoo bottle — Ted Stevens Anchorage International Airport (ANC)
- Knife in a car seat — Dallas Fort Worth International Airport (DFW)
- Bullets in Nesquik — Miami International Airport (MIA)
- Firearm in a golf bag — Houston’s George Bush Intercontinental Airport (IAH)
- Bullets and knives in tinfoil— Ohio’s Akron-Canton Airport (CAK) and Newark Liberty International Airport (EWR)