Throughout Melanesia, tattoo designs consisted of geometric motifs and abstract depictions of everyday objects, heavenly bodies and animals. Stylised millipedes, fish and birds were especially common. As with many other peoples of Oceania, the Melanesians had a religious fascination for everything that flew. The names of flying animals would often be the same as those of spirits and ghosts, suggesting that anything that flew was by definition a spirit, or possessed by one. Each island had one or more totem birds, the most common of which were the frigate bird and the hornbill. Realistic representations of the tusks of wild boar, spiders and human figures, among others, were unique to the inhabitants of the Banks Islands. The number of tusks integrated in a pattern was an indication of rank.
On Oaba, an island in the New Hebrides, if a man had adequate status and sufficient wild boar as payment, he was entitled to be tattooed with certain designs. This also applied to girls from prominent families and the higher the father’s rank, the more tattoos a girl could have.