When great deeds are remembered in this jungle, one name will stand above all others: our friend, Baloo the bear.Bagheera Baloo is the deuteragonist of Disney's 1967 animated feature film The Jungle Book. He's a fun-loving, easygoing, loyal, and good-natured sloth bear who becomes best friends with a “man-cub" named Mowgli. In the original book by Rudyard Kipling, Baloo was very different from his Disney incarnation. In the book, Baloo was a humorless, serious, and strict aging sloth bear who ut