The giant crab is the monster-slaying hero of the Bunun flood myth. While the ancestors were stranded on the mountain summits above the risen waters, the crab descended to battle the giant serpent whose body blocked the river. Gripping the serpent with its pincers, it cut open the monster's belly; the serpent died, the dam broke, and the waters drained away so that people could return to the land. Comparative mythologists class the tale among the distinctive Formosan flood myths in which the deluge is ended by an animal combat rather than by divine decree, and the episode was recorded from Bunun narrators by Ogawa and Asai (1935) and analysed by Ho Ting-jui (1971) and Lu Yi-lu (2002).