The corpse-eaters steal and devour corpses. When they choose to appear, they resemble and live among ordinary folk. They get themselves human spouses by assuming an attractive disguise. Like carrion birds they flock in trees near graveyards. They come down at night and dig out the fresh laid corpses. Unseen they also transform the corpse at a wake into pig, in its place putting a banana trunk they have first made a look just like the dead except that the substitute has no distinguish fingerprints. The aswang then feast on the pig-looking corpse sending portions to human neighbors to make them corpse-eaters, too, for they are most effective when attacking in flocks, and must increase their numbers.
Corpse-eaters in the Bicol, a province in the Philippines are monitor the sounds incidental to death by putting their ear in the hallow of the mortar they keep in purpose. Aswangs can tell when a person near death because he smells like a rip jack fruit; these corpse-eaters then cling to the joist close to the sickbed, sniffling eagerly. They communicate the news to other corpse-eaters and all zoom in. After the feasting on the dead, these creatures get greedier and set upon the relatives keeping vigil.