Bagheera Bagheera Bagheera (; "Baghīrā"/"Bagīdah") is a fictional character in Rudyard Kipling's Mowgli stories in the "Jungle Book" (coll. 1894) and the "Second Jungle Book" (coll. 1895). He is a black panther (melanistic Indian leopard) who serves as friend, protector and mentor to the "man-cub" Mowgli. The word "bagheera" is Hindi/Urdu for black panther-- although the root word bagh means tiger. Born in captivity in the menagerie of the Raja of Udaipur, Rajasthan, India, Bagheera begins to plan for his freedom after his mother dies. Once he is mature and strong enough, he breaks the lock on his cage and escapes
Bagheera short documentary video about the making of the film, which is available on YouTube (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XhAZEDiKSsM&t=13s), Disney told the screenwriters and artists to forget what they had read in Kipling’s original stories—the direction he wanted to take for his film was a different approach. Although the original concept art was described as “dark,” Walt Disney scrapped those images in favor of a whimsical, musical jungle scene. Bagheera’s past is one of the darker elements that Disney omitted in the movie. The violence of Kipling’s stories is also toned down. Bagheera, for instance, never physically confronts Shere Khan in the 1967 film