| Motif | Name | Description |
| a5 | The Sun and the Moon are males | The Moon is male, the Sun is also male or (much more rare) asexual |
| b12 | Rivers and snakes | The river bed follows the way of a snake, fish, dragon or crab; pieces of the snake’s body turn into rivers; a river is a snake |
| b32 | Women turn into fish | After a conflict with their husbands women turn into fish |
| b58 | Wild turkey’s red neck | After the original fire is stolen by the ancestors, a partridge size forest bird (Penelope sp.; Anhima cornuta; etc.; jacu, paujil) swallows burning coal and (besides the Andoque) its neck becomes red |
| b7b | Waters from broken pot | Sea, river, waters of flood flow out of a small receptacle |
| d12 | Food baked in the sun | First people or inhabitants of a distant country cook food in the sun; or fire owner lies that he or she cooks food in the sun |
| d4a | Theft of fire | Fire is stolen from its original owner or brought back to the people from somebody who had stolen it before |
| d4f | Beaver or fish let themselves to be roasted | Beaver (in North American) or a small fish (in South America) lets fire owners catch and roast it, then revives and carries the fire away |
| d7 | Fire and toad | Frog or toad possesses the fire, steals it from original owner, tries to extinguish or to save it |
| d8 | Fire and a predator animal | Fire or summer is stolen from a big predator: a lion (in Africa), a tiger (in Asia), a bear (in Siberia and North America) or a jaguar (in South America) |
| e13a | Sacred knowledge from under the water | Sacred knowledge, objects and rituals are initially obtained from the denizens of the underwater world |
| e26 | People (women) transformed into fish become humans again | People or only women disappear under the water and turn into fish. They are caught using fishing tools and become humans (women) again. (Narratives that tell about a man who caught only one fish who because his wife are not included; see motig F7) |
| e8 | People of wood | The first people or (the first) woman (wife of a primeval ancestor) are made of wood |
| f30 | Snake paramour | A woman or a girl takes a snake, an eel (i.e. Pacific snake-eel), a lizard, or a worm for husband or paramour. People kill or badly injure him, the woman and/or her progeny or the woman herself is transformed into snake. Cf. motif k76b: the snake-husband becomes and remains a handsome man |
| f34 | Land animal paramour | Certain woman or a group of women takes for a paramour a big land animal. Husbands, brothers or (adoptive) children kill or maim paramour and (sometimes) the woman |
| f34b | The paramour is not a human being | A girl (a woman, a group of women) intentionally takes a penis-being, a snake, an eel, a lizard, a worm, a big water animal or water monster or a big terrestrial mammal for paramour. People kill or maim the paramour, the woman and/or her progeny or she is transformed herself into an animal. She is blamed for her behavior |
| f35 | Feeding with the paramour’s meat | Person feeds another with the meat of his or her sexual partner who cooks or eats it without knowing whose meat it is |
| f40a | Husband of the first women | An anthropomorphic male or an androgyne is the only possessor or leader of women |
| f43 | The women disappear | The women of the ancestral community kill or abandon the men |
| f43a | The women kill the men | The women of the ancestral community kill, try to kill or transform the men |
| f43b | Women disappear under the ground | When women of the ancestral community abandon the men, they disappear in the opening that leads underground |
| f45 | The Amazons | There are (or were) women who live apart from men in their own village or villages |
| f51 | The clandestine lover | Person who conceals his or her identity comes to his or her lover (at night). Next time, the lover puts a mark on the stranger's face, body or clothes doing this intentionally (to recognize him or her) or by chance (that leads to the identification) |
| f51a | Aggressive sister | When incest relations with her brother come to light, the sister openly claims her brother for a husband, turns into monster, kills people |
| f7 | The underwater-maiden | Man takes or attempts to take a wife who is connected with the underwater world (fish, crab, snake, water animal and the like) |
| f86 | Conditional signal | Person summons with a certain signal a non-human being (usually his or her sexual partner or his or her protégé). Another person spies, uses the same signal or pronounces the same words and kills the being who comes to him (or uses this being sexually himself) |
| g13 | People ate rotten wood | Before acquisition of cultivated plants people ate rotten or soft (Ceiba L., Ochroma Sw.) wood; some people eat rotten wood |
| g13c | Bad food of the pre-agricultural epoch | Before the cultivated plants or edible wild plants become known, people ate (decomposed) wood, bark, mud, stones, fungi |
| g18 | Person wants to be sacrificed | A person asks people to abandon him or her in the forest, to burn or drag him or her around the future garden plot, to burn her in her house, etc. People fulfill the person's wish and find cultivated plants growing on the place |
| g20 | Woman turns into plants | Food crops emerge from remains of a woman or girl |
| g23 | Alive being turns into many objects | Person or creature is transformed. Separate parts of its (his, her) body give origin to different objects or creatures (only etiological narratives are considered) |
| h29 | Origin of foreigners | A woman is impregnated by an animal, usually by a snake. People of hostile nation originate or receive their culture from her progeny or from her paramour's relatives |
| j1 | The vengeful heroes | Persons avenge the death of their father, mother or other relatives who are one (rare two) generations older than they |
| j4a | Revenge for the death of the mother | A woman is murdered. Her son or children (rare: grandchildren, nephews) revenge for her death |
| k2 | The destroyed ladder | Hero climbs up (e.g. to a tree) or down (e.g. into a deep cave) by ladder, rope, from branch to branch, etc. The rope etc. breaks or is intentionally destroyed and the hero cannot return to the ground. (All cases of motif K2A, besides the Koreans, also contain motif K2) |
| k25 | Magic wife | A man consciously marries a woman related to the non-human world |
| k25e | Magic wife is an ancestor | All humans, members of a particular ethnic or social group or a ruling dynasty are believed to descend from a mortal man and a woman of supernatural origin |
| k4 | The bird nester | Person climbs up a tree or rock or descends to a cave to get eggs or nestlings from the bird's nest. Another person remains on the ground. They get into conflict and/or the first person is unable to get back to the ground |
| k7 | “Like pubis of your wife” | Hero compares something with pubis of another man's wife or sister. The insulted man maroons him in a tree or rock. |
| l40 | Reflection and shadow | Person discovers (rare:still fails to discover) another getting to see his or her shadow or reflection in water |
| m11 | The unclean food | Person feeds others a food that is extracted from his, hers or somebody else’ body or is polluted by body extractions not informing about the source of the food |
| m70 | An elder person poisons a younger one with intestinal gas | Old person tricks a young man into smelling her or his intestinal gas |
| m70a | Old woman is pierced through | An old woman defecates or breaks wind over a man. He kills her inserting a cutting object into her anus or vagina |