TOKYO - A JAPANESE man was arrested for releasing hundreds of beetle larvae inside a moving express train to try to scare female passengers, police said on Tuesday.

'I wanted to see women get scared and shake their legs,' police quoted 35-year-old Manabu Mizuta as saying.

He was arrested on the spot by a patrolling police officer after releasing the creatures on the Keihan line in Osaka prefecture.

'He would go close to women on the train, any woman, and pour out the worms from containers,' said a police spokesman.

Local police had been on alert after 18 similar cases of released worms had been reported this month by the same train operator.

'When the arrest was made, the man had nearly emptied a container, which is believed to have held 200 worms,' he said. 'You cannot count them because there are so many.'

Mizuta had 10 containers in his backpack estimated to contain a total of 3,600 worms, police said.

'We have the worms sitting inside the police station right now,' the spokesman said. 'You see them wriggling inside their clear cases. It's really disgusting.' -- AFP