Tabaqui

Tabaqui is a fictional golden jackal featured in Rudyard Kipling's Mowgli stories collected in "The Jungle Book". He is described as thus:

"It was the jackal — Tabaqui, the Dish-licker — and the wolves of India despise Tabaqui because he runs about making mischief, and telling tales, and eating rags and pieces of leather from the village rubbish-heaps. But they are afraid of him too, because Tabaqui, more than any one else in the Jungle, is apt to go mad, and then he forgets that he was ever afraid of any one, and runs through the forest biting everything in his way."("Madness" is the Jungle's word for hydrophobia.)

He feeds on scraps from either Shere Khan or the wolves of the Seeonee Pack. He is unpopular with the wolves, due to his mock cordiality, and habit of sucking up to Shere Khan. He appears in the beginning of the book, visiting Mowgli's adoptive parents, Mother and Father Wolf, and they are clearly annoyed by his presence, since he announces that Shere Khan the tiger is hunting in their territory. Tabaqui is later killed by one of Mowgli's 'siblings', Grey Brother, who crushes his back.

Media portrayals

Tabaqui has been featured in a few film/animated "Jungle Book" adaptations, but usually portrayed as a hyena.

In Chuck Jones' made for-TV cartoons "Mowgli's Brothers", Tabaqui is accuratly portrayed as the sniveling Jackal who serves Shere Khan.

In the anime series "Jungle Book Shonen Mowgli", Tabaqui is a striped hyena, while in the movie "", Tabaqui is portrayed as a Spotted Hyena.

Tabaqui is one of few characters from the book that does not appear in Disney's The Jungle Book