Bagheera pigmentation, which is why he is commonly referred to as a black panther. In Disney's 1967 animated adaptation, Bagheera the panther is, as in the book, male, and voiced by Sebastian Cabot. The panther is portrayed as an intelligent, mature, and logical character, quite similar to the Bagheera in the books. In the film, it is Bagheera and not the wolves who first finds Mowgli, a young village child. It is Bagheera who brings Mowgli to the care of the wolves and ensures that the baby survives. He is also the one who takes him back to the village, for
The Jungle Book do, through the character of Mowgli himself; through his "kindly mentors", Bagheera and Baloo; through the repeated failure of the "bully" Shere Khan; through the endless but useless talk of the Bandar-log; and through the law, which makes the jungle "an integrated whole" while enabling Mowgli's brothers to live as the "Free People". The academic Jan Montefiore commented on the book's balance of law and freedom that "You don't need to invoke Jacqueline Rose on the adult's dream of the child's innocence or Perry Nodelman's theory of children's literature colonising its readers' minds with a double fantasy of the child