Baloo

Baloo (from bhālū "bear") is a main fictional character featured in Rudyard Kipling's The Jungle Book from 1894 and The Second Jungle Book from 1895. A sloth bear, he is the strict teacher of the cubs of the Seeonee wolf pack. His most challenging pupil is the "man-cub" Mowgli. He and Bagheera, the panther, save Mowgli from Shere Khan, the tiger, and endeavour to teach Mowgli the Law of the Jungle in many of The Jungle Book stories.

==Name and species== He is described in Kipling's work as "the sleepy brown bear". Robert Armitage Sterndale, from whom Kipling derived most of his knowledge of Indian fauna, used the Hindi word "Bhalu" for several bear species, though Daniel Karlin, who edited the Penguin reissue of The Jungle Book in 1987, states that, with the exception of colour, Kipling's descriptions of Baloo are consistent with the sloth bear, as brown and Asian black bears do not occur in the Seoni area where the story takes place. Also, the name sloth can be used in the context of sleepiness. Karlin states, however, that Baloo's diet of "only roots and nuts and honey" is a trait more common to the Asian black bear than to the sloth bear. Nevertheless, this may be single observation only; according to the dietary habits of sloth bears, while sloth bears prefer termites and ants (which is also described as Baloo's special treat in The Jungle Book), their main sources of food are honey and fruits most of the year. In the 1967 Walt Disney's The Jungle Book, he's portrayed as a sloth bear, while in the Russian version, he's portrayed as an Asian black bear. In the 1994 remake of The Jungle Book, Baloo is depicted as a cinnamon bear, while live-action television shows and films often have Baloo as an American black bear. In the 2016 adaptation, Baloo is stated to be a sloth bear by Bagheera, though his appearance is similar to that of a Himalayan brown bear. Though this subspecies of the brown bear is absent from historical records on Seoni, it might have ranged across most of northern India.