"The Jungle Book": Walt Disney's Animated Classic Quiz

Answer: Bagheera

Bagheera the black panther, voiced by Sebastian Cabot, is the first character to speak in the film. We find almost at once that he already knows how the story ends when he says, "Had I known how deeply I was to be involved, I would have obeyed my first impulse and walked away."

Answer: The baby has been abandoned in the jungle and he wants to find him a home.

Bagheera has an uneasy feeling that this man cub is going to be trouble. Still, he is so small and helpless, the panther feels responsible for him. Being unable to care for the baby himself, he brings him to the wolf family, who love and bring up young Mowgli as if he were their own.

Answer: Shere Khan has returned. He hates men and will kill anyone who shelters Mowgli.

Shere Khan, the great and fearsome Bengal tiger, has returned to the part of the jungle where Mowgli and his pack live. The wolves know that he fears and hates men and their guns so, even though Mowgli is just a cub who knows nothing about men and their hunters' ways, Shere Khan would try to kill him. For that reason, he is a danger to the family who love him.

It is with sorrow that the wolves say goodbye to Mowgli when he leaves riding on Bagheera's back.

Answer: Ka the python

The python Ka, voiced by Sterling Holloway, tries to hypnotize Mowgli, voiced by Bruce Reitherman, so he can eat him. He also tries to hypnotize the panther. The friends escape thanks to Mowgli's quick thinking. Ka slithers away from the encounter very cross, because Mowgli has tied a knot in his tail.

There are no vampire bats or giant spiders in "The Jungle Book". Vampire bats live in South America, not in India. Giant Spiders live in Murkwood, a forest in J.R.R. Tolkien's 1937 adventure novel "The Hobbit" and in the Forbidden Forest in J.K. Rowling's "Harry Potter" series the first book of which, "Harry Potter and the Philosopher's (Sorcerer's) Stone" was published in 1997.

Answer: A herd of elephants

Singing and trumpeting, Col. Happy, voiced by J. Pat O'Malley, leads his herd in their morning march past the tree where Bagheera and Mowgli have taken shelter, waking them. This makes Bagheera grumpy, but Mowgli is delighted. He slips down from the tree and takes up his place at the end of the parade, behind the baby elephant, Happy Jr, voiced by Clint Howard. When the colonel discovers Mowgli, he is very annoyed, and Bagheera has to smooth things over. Having made friends with Happy Jr., Mowgli is reluctant to leave the elephants. But at length he lets the panther lead him away.

Volt is one of several collective nouns used for vultures. Others include committee and wake.

Answer: He runs away.

Mowgli doesn't want to go to the man village. After all, he has lived his whole life in the jungle, knowing nothing about men. He cannot understand that his friend wants to protect him so, in anger and great distress, he declares that he can take care of himself and runs away from the panther. Bagheera follows, trying alternately to persuade and to order Mowgli.

The disagreement ends with the panther falling in the river. Upon scrambling out, he grumpily washes his paws of the troublesome man cub.

Answer: Sounds of a fight, as if Mowgli were being attacked

Bagheera dashes to the rescue, only to find that Baloo the bear, voiced by Phil Harris, is not attacking Mowgli, but trying to teach him to fight. Since he doesn't think Baloo is too bright, Bagheera decides to stay with the bear and the man cub. They play happily in the river...until Mowgli is kidnapped!

Answer: So Mowgli can teach him how to make fire.

King Louie the orangutan, voiced by Louis Prima, is king of the apes and monkeys. But he wants more. He longs to be a man. He kidnaps Mowgli so the man cub can teach him how to make fire because, he thinks, controlling fire will make him just the same as a man. Mowgli doesn't know how to make fire, though. Things are looking bad for him until Bagheera and Baloo come to the rescue.

Answer: No

The impetuous Baloo leaps in to save their small friend before Bagheera has finished explaining his strategy. So, though the bear does create a distraction, the rescue doesn't work as smoothly as the panther anticipated. They make the apes and monkeys very angry, barely escaping with the man cub.

Answer: Ka is so rattled by his conversation with Shere Khan that he starts feeling sorry for Mowgli and doesn't pay attention.

Shere Khan, voiced by George Sanders, has been interested in Mowgli for some time. He comes upon Ka as he is singing to the man cub in another effort to hypnotize him. The python is so rattled by his conversation with the tiger that he begins feeling sorry for Mowgli.

This is a mistake from Ka's point of view, since his distraction gives Mowgli the opportunity he needs to wriggle out of the snake's coils and make a dash for it.

Answer: Four vultures

A storm is gathering in the wasteland where the vultures, Buzzie, (voiced by J. Pat O'Malley), Flaps (voiced by Chad Stuart), Ziggy (voiced by Digby Wolfe) and Dizzy (voiced by Lord Tim Hudson), are bored and idly bickering. Then Mowgli comes along, something new and interesting. They quickly realize that he is worse off than they are. At least they have each other, while Mowgli is all alone. He is so despondent that they befriend and sing to him. Unfortunately, all the noise they make leads Shere Khan to them.

The vultures look like the Beatles, with Ziggy resembling John Lennon, Flaps resembling Paul McCartney, Dizzy resembling George Harrison and Buzzie resembling Ringo Starr. Indeed, Walt wanted the Fab Four to voice the characters but, according to Wikipedia, John turned down the offer, which is too bad. It would have been great fun for audiences to recognize them. Besides, whatever type of music Walt wanted them to sing, an appearance in a Disney movie would have been good publicity. Still, they didn't take the roles, and the actors who performed them did a fine job.

An owl appears as one of Winnie the Pooh's friends in "The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh" (1977). Three geese, or more properly two geese and their uncle, a gander, appear in "The Aristocats" (1970), while one hundred and one Dalmatians of course appear in the 1961 film of that name.

Answer: Yes

Mowgli sees no reason to be afraid of Shere Khan. Still, he takes advantage of the tiger's closing his eyes to snatch up a fallen branch and smack him on the nose - a brave act, but also an exceedingly foolish one. It looks like the end for Mowgli, until the faithful Baloo comes charging to the rescue.

While the bear distracts the tiger by hanging on to his tail, the man cub hits the tiger with his stick, shouting at him angrily. But even Baloo clinging to his tail can't stop Shere Khan chasing Mowgli. Seeing his bravery and his immanent danger of being eaten, the vultures airlift Mowgli to safety. Mowgli, though, is having none of it.

His beloved Baloo is in trouble. The vultures help the bear, mobbing Shere Khan. But only the man cub can defeat the tiger.

Answer: Mowgli frightens him with fire.

The storm grows stronger during the fight, and lightning strikes the vultures' tree. Remembering that fire is the one thing Shere Khan fears, one of the vultures calls to the man cub to defend himself with that deadliest of weapons, that only he can wield.

He does so, tying burning branches to Shere Khan's tail. The once haughty tiger runs off into the jungle, frightened and in pain. But the victory is bittersweet. Baloo has been killed in the fight...or has he?

Answer: "Greater love has no one than he who lays down his life for his friends."

The only one of the choices that is a well-known quotation, and the only one Bagheera says, is the beautiful statement made by Jesus in St. John's Gospel, Chapter Fifteen, verse 13. It seems fitting, coming from the serious and thoughtful Bagheera, who goes on to give a eulogy for their brave friend.

But then we see an eye open, and Baloo's head rise. He had been knocked out in the fight, coming to in time to hear Bagheera's words, "When great deeds are remembered in the jungle, one name will stand above all others - Baloo the bear..." Unseen by Mowgli and Bagheera, Baloo sniffs and says reverently, "I wish my mother could have heard this." .

Just as Bagheera and Mowgli start to leave, Baloo sits up and calls after them. And everything is back the way it should be, as far as Mowgli is concerned.

Answer: He returns to the man village willingly.

Bagheera has almost given up hope of returning Mowgli to the man village, when by chance Mowgli hears an unfamiliar sound. Following it, he and his friends see a sight such as the man cub has never seen before. When he asks in awe what it is, the worldly wise Baloo replies, "Forget about those, they ain't nothin' but trouble!" He tries valiantly to forestall the inevitable, but Mowgli wants a closer look.

All the time the girl, sung by Darleen Carr, is filling her water jar. In his eagerness to get a closer look, Mowgli falls out of the tree he had climbed, splashing into the water and making the girl laugh. He swims to shore but, as Baloo says, he's hooked. She starts up the path and, in a lovely piece of business, drops the jar. Mowgli leaps to retrieve it and, with a last look back at his grieving friends, he follows her into her house.

Richard and Robert Sherman, who wrote the music for several Disney films including "Mary Poppins" as well as other movies including "Chitty Chitty Bang! Bang!" felt that songs should grow organically from the story and, where possible, forward the action. Their score for "The Jungle Book" (which incorporates Terry Gilkyson's "Bare Necessities) does this. But in a sense it does more. The song that the unnamed young girl sings at the end merely puts words to the theme that runs through the entire film, what one comes unconsciously to think of as "Mowgli's Theme". So, when he hears her sing, it seems totally right that he is drawn to her and, in the end, follows her.

Baloo is heartbroken to lose his man cub. Though Bagheera is sad too, he knows it is for the best and things are now back as they should be. The film fades with the friends walking into the jungle sunset, singing "Bare Necessities".