The Mythology and Folklore Database
M101A - Predators learn to fear humans, ATU 157A.
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Source Data from Berezkin's Analytics Catalogue, if using this data please acknowledge and link to it here:
Ю.Е. Березкин, Е.Н. Дувакин. Тематическая классификация и распределение фольклорно-мифологических мотивов по ареалам. Аналитический каталог.
Summary of Motif
Learning that humans are supposedly stronger than him, a large predator finds a human and challenges him to a contest of strength. This ends badly for him. Cf. motif M101.Berezkin category: Adventures: Tricks and episodes
This is of motif type Adventures and tricks and is part group 11, Tricks and competitions won thanks to deception, absurd and obscene behavior
Top 10 Motifs with similar dispersal patterns
| Motif | Similarity | Motif Summary |
|---|---|---|
| M90A1 | 99.71% | It is required to sew clothes from the skin of lice (fleas) or guess the origin of a large animal, a large skin, the contents of the box; the animal (skin) arose from lice (fleas), in the box - louse. |
| M158 | 99.63% | A human and an animal (devil) or two animals decide to cultivate a field and divide the harvest so that one gets the above-ground part and the other gets the underground part. One of the characters (always) loses out. |
| M136C | 99.52% | Based on indirect signs or someone's words, the fool believes that he has died and lies motionless. |
| K142 | 99.45% | After killing several people, a man asks a gravedigger to bury the dead and each time says that the dead man has returned. The gravedigger buries everyone, but believes that there is only one dead man. |
| M39H | 99.39% | The wife wants to get rid of her husband and usually asks the spirit to blind him. The husband hides in a hollow, behind an altar, etc., and answers on behalf of the spirit (usually advises to kill her husband with good food), or the husband tells his wife that delicious food can make you blind. Pretending to be blind, the husband kills his lover (and wife). |
| K73A5 | 99.32% | Malicious women replace the newborn with a kitten (telling the father that his wife has given birth to a kitten). See motifs K73, K73A. |
| L42G | 99.29% | The stepmother, and more often the father (usually at the insistence of his new wife), leaves the children in a deserted place or sends them into the forest. They end up in the house of a cannibal or cannibals, all (or at least one of them) survive and achieve success. |
| K113 | 99.28% | Young men (usually three brothers) find wives (usually by shooting arrows or other objects at random, see motif K113A). The wife of the youngest brother is initially ugly or appears in the form of an animal (often a frog or snake), but turns out to be a beauty and a sorceress. Alternatively, the girls choose their husbands, and the wife of the youngest brother is a sorceress. |
| K80A | 99.23% | An object or creature that has emerged from the remains, jewellery, etc. of the murdered person tells about the murder, exposing the criminal. The East Slavic texts in this section were mainly provided by K.Y. Rakhno. |
| K81 | 99.19% | For a minor offence or on false charges, a young woman is maimed and expelled from her home (rarely: she is killed or maims herself). The cripple miraculously recovers (the dead woman is resurrected). |
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Map of Motif Dispersal
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This motif has been recorded in 46 traditions: Ancient Egypt, Egyptian, Arabs of Iraq, Iraqi, Algeria Arabs, Ontong Java, Nukumanu, Takuu, Nukuria, Shan, Ahom, Khampti, Indian literary tradition (Vedic, Brahman, Purana, Indian Buddhism, Hinduism, Ramayana, Mahabharata, Panchtantra, Jatakas); iconography of Hindu temples, Hindi-speaking peoples and casts (incl. Teli, Parahiya; incl. Chhattisgarhi) of Northern and West-Central India, Miao (Hmong) and Yao of Southern China, Early Chinese written sources, Spain, Spaniards, Catalan, France, Dutch, Flemish, Poles, Czech, Czechs, Hungarians, Greeks (modern), Balkarians, Bulgarians, Balkarians, Macedonians, Balkarians, Lithuanians, Latvians, Livonians, Estonians, Finns, Karelians, Vepsians, Norwegians, Swedes, Byelarusians, Belarusians, Russians: Central part of ethnic territory as in A.D. 1500 (Tver, Yaroslavl, Moscow, Kostroma, Vladimir, Ivanovo, Nizhny Novgorod, Ryazan, Tula, Kaluga, Smolensk provinces; in case of absence in other areas also Russians in Vyatka, Perm, Kazan provinces), Yazgulami, Tajik, Persians, Ossetians, Georgians, Anatolia Turks, Hui (Dungan) of Xinjiang, Gansu, Shaanxi, Shanxi, Inner Mongolia, Qinghai, Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan (Dungan texts from Southern and Eastern China are clustered with the Chinese ones), Chuvash, Buryats: Western (cis Baikal), Mongols (Khalkha), Central Yakuts (Sakha), Central Tibetans (Yu Tsang, incl. Sikkim Tibetans, Tichurong of NW Nepal), Maldives, Kordofan, Germans: South (Upper German dialects): Alsace (Elsass), Baden-Württemberg, Bawaria, Swabia, Switzerland, Bohemia, Sudeten, Austria, Frisians