Bagheera even though Baloo defends Mowgli while the protective black panther shelters the boy. No scars are visible on the cartoon Disney drawings of Bagheera to hint at his captive past either. Bagheera is also one of the major characters left out of the "TaleSpin" series which used several "Jungle Book" characters. However, many of Shere Khan's employees and military personnel are black panthers very similar in appearance to Bagheera. In the prequel cartoon series "Jungle Cubs", Bagheera was voiced by Elizabeth Daily and Dee Bradley Baker, and was often made fun of by his friends, especially the bully Shere Khan.
The Jungle Book and class are mapped out in the stories, contributing to "an imagining of Englishness as a site of power and racial superiority." Nyman suggested that "The Jungle Book"'s monkeys and snakes represent "colonial animals" and "racialized Others" within the Indian jungle, whereas the White Seal promotes "'truly English' identities in the nationalist allegory" of that story. Swati Singh, in his "Secret History of the Jungle Book", notes that the tone is like that of Indian folklore, fable-like, and that critics have speculated that the Kipling may have heard similar stories from his Hindu bearer and his Portuguese "ayah" (nanny) during