- “Nice sidekick, Shere Khan. A hyena who laughs at his own bad jokes.”
- ―Bagheera to Shere Khan about Tabaqui
Tabaqui is a jackal, who was to be a minor antagonist in an early draft of the 1967 film The Jungle Book; he was cut from the film, although he did appear as the secondary antagonist of the 1998 film The Jungle Book: Mowgli's Story.
While he also doesn't appear in the 1994 live-action adaptation, his name is given to one of the minor antagonist's men.
Appearances
The Jungle Book 2
Tabaqui was originally going to make his appearance in The Jungle Book 2, after Mowgli meets up with Baloo near the beginning of the film. Tabaqui attempted to eat Mowgli, but faces many accidents and injuries as he pursues them. Mowgli and Baloo remain unaware of Tabaqui's presence, and the two walk away. Unfortunately, he was deleted from the final film and his role was given to Kaa instead.
Trivia
- Like several Jungle Book characters (e.g. Colonel Hathi, Baloo, etc.), Tabaqui was intended to be altered into a comic relief character and voiced by actor Bill Thompson.
- In some movie adaptations of the original Jungle Book, Tabaqui is a striped hyena (Hyaena hyaena), instead of a golden jackal (Canis aureus).
- A possible reason why Tabaqui was deleted from The Jungle Book because the idea of a wild wolf failing to eat a protagonist was already used in a previous Disney film, The Sword in the Stone (ironically, in Japanese animated series Jungle Book Shonen Mowgli seen in Episode 4 Tabaqui tries eat to Mowgli). This idea of a villain failing to eat a protagonist is retained, but with Kaa in the role.
- He was supposed to be a parody of Wile E. Coyote (ironically, as a side note, when Chuck Jones did Mowgli's Brothers, Tabaqui looked very much like Wile E. Coyote).
- Tabaqui being represented as a spotted hyena is a mistake because the spotted hyenas live in Africa and not in India where The Jungle Book takes place.
