Who's Who in Kipling's "Jungle Books" Quiz

Answer: Akela

The name Akela comes from the Hindi word for "alone". In the original stories, Akela eventually leaves the pack and becomes a lone wolf, hunting by himself. He subsequently re-joins the pack in order to defend it against a pack of wild dogs (dholes), although in the course of the battle he is killed. Raksha is the female wolf who becomes Mowgli's adoptive mother. Ikki is a porcupine, and Chil is a drahminy kite.

The picture shows an Indian wolf, canis lupus pallipes.

Answer: Mongoose

"Rikki-tikki-tavi" tells the story of a mongoose who is rescued from drowning by an English family in India. He subsequently repays this debt by saving the family from a pair of cobras named Nag and Nagaina. In real life, mongooses are known to attack and kill certain venomous snakes, including cobras, though generally as a means of protection rather than as a source of food.

The name Rikki-tikki-tavi is onomatopoeic, referring to the chattering noise he makes when he is angry.

Answer: Kaa

In Kipling's original "Jungle Book" stories, Kaa is a friend of Mowgli, who saves him from the tribe of monkeys known as the Bandar-log, and also comes up with a plan to defeat the wild dogs (dholes) which are threatening the wolf pack. In the 1967 Walt Disney cartoon, the character of Kaa is a more comical character who is also markedly less friendly, and several times tries to eat Mowgli.

Answer: Kala Nag

The name Kala Nag means "black snake" in Hindi. In the story, Toomai is a young boy who wants to be an elephant handler like his father. No human has ever "seen the elephants dance", but one night Toomai is taken by Kala Nag deep into the jungle, where he sees the elephants stamping their feet and dancing until daybreak. Having seen this spectacle, and thus been accepted by the elephants themselves, he knows that one day he will become an expert elephant handler himself.

Answer: Kotick

Not all of the stories collected in Kipling's two "Jungle Book" collections are set in the jungle. "The White Seal" tells of Kotick, an albino northern fur seal born on an island in the Bering Sea. Having seen many of his fellow seals being clubbed to death by the local islanders, he resolves to find an island where they will be safe. Eventually he does so, and persuades as many as possible of the other seals to join him.

Answer: Baloo

Most critics seem to agree that Baloo is a sloth bear (melursus ursinus), since it is the most common species in the area of India in which the stories are set, although some of the details that Kipling provides about his diet (nothing but roots, nuts and honey) don't entirely match those of the actual animal.

The sloth bear got its name because western naturalists thought it was related to South American sloths. The picture shows a sloth bear in the National Zoo in Washington, D.C.

Answer: Tailorbird

The tailorbird (Orthotomus sutorius) gets its name from its habit of "sewing" leaves together to make a form of shelter inside which the bird builds its nest. As with many of the animal names in the "Jungle Book" stories, Kipling used an appropriate Indian native word as a character name; Dahzee is the Urdu word for tailor.

In the story, he is shown as rather scatter-brained and not much use in the fight against Nag and Nagaina. His wife is rather more practically-minded, and actively helps Rikki-tikki-tavi to defeat the snakes.

Answer: Shere Khan

The first of the "Jungle Book" stories about Mowgli, "Mowgli's Brothers", explains how Shere Khan was originally responsible for the baby Mowgli becoming abandoned in the jungle. He attempts without success to lure Mowgli away from the protection of the wolf pack, and in a subsequent story, "Tiger, Tiger", Mowgli and the wolves succeed in killing Shere Khan by inciting a stampeding herd of buffalo to trample him to death.

The other options are minor characters from the stories; Rama and Mysa are water buffaloes, and Chikai is a rat.

Answer: Mugger

The mugger (crocodylus palustris) is a native of the Indian subcontinent. It is smaller than the saltwater crocodile and eats mostly small mammals, fish, reptiles and birds. Kipling's mugger, however, is an unusually large specimen, and is known to be a man-eater, having by its own admission devoured many people during the years of the Indian Mutiny.

At the climax, it is shot dead by a British engineer who had narrowly escaped being eaten by it as a child, many years previously. The story was first published in 1894, and collected in the "Second Jungle Book" the following year.

Answer: Bagheera

The name "black panther" is given to the melanistic variety of several big cat species. Bagheera, coming from India, is a black leopard. In the stories, he is one of Mowgli's chief friends and mentors. The story reveals that he was in fact born in captivity, but escaped once he was large enough to break out of his cage and make his home in the jungle. For this reason, he understands the ways of men better than most of the other animals.