Bagheera worried about what his child will find around the next corner, the big cat who knows he has to let go just a little but can't find it in himself to do so". 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
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