One motif is that that those who became monkeys are hungry children who are denied of proper food by their mothers and stepmothers. In lowland Filipino legends, it is usually a lazy boy who is transformed into a monkey. In these motifs, the transformation into a monkey happened as a form of punishment for laziness and selfishness. In some stories, irreverence in children may also change them into monkeys. Legends about other small animals like birds vary from one place to another.
Common motif includes girl or boy cruelly treated by their parents or step-parent.
They run away and become a bird, oftentimes by merely wishing to escape the cruelty of the parent. Some birds that make peculiar noises are also subject of legends. The owl was said to be an old woman who kept weeping and crying for her dead son Juan to come back to her. An interesting legend about the bat says that it is once a rat on which the wings of a bird got stuck. He was however, rejected by both the birds and the rats, and so in shame he hides during the daytime and flies only at night.