Animated Wild Cats and Bears

There are some very recognizable big cats and bears in animated movies. Read along to learn some facts about the species represented in film!

Kenai from Brother Bear

Kenai is a character in the movie Brother Bear, a dramatic tale of a brother turning into a bear. Kenai turns into a brown bear! We have a couple of our own brown bears here at TCWR: grizzly bear Bam Bam and Russian brown bear Huggy. However, as far a we can tell, our brown bears were not once human. There are several subspecies of brown bears, but the brown bears depicted in this movie are the Kodiak subspecies. Did you know that brown bears are great diggers? They have large paws and long claws to help them dig around and forage for food. Brown bears are also identifiable by the large hump on their back atop their shoulders.

Baloo from The Jungle Book

Baloo is a lovable character in The Jungle Book. Due to the setting of this story, he is most likely as sloth bear. We do not have any sloth bears here at TCWR, but that doesn’t mean we can’t learn a little something about them! Sloth bears are native to Sri Lanka, Nepal, and India. Sloth bears are missing their front two teeth. This allows them to suck up insects as part of their diet.

Baloo (left), sloth bear picture (right)

Simba and Nala from The Lion King

We all know these two. Simba and Naula from The Lion King. The Lion King is probably one of the first movies would you think of if asked to pick a movie featuring big cats. In a pride, female lions, or lionesses, tend to be the ones to do the hunting. Male lions are more likely to defend the pride’s territory. Another interesting fact about lions is that the dark and larger a male lion’s mane it, the more dominant he tends to be. This means that Scar really would have been more dominant than Mufasa.

Nala and Simba (left), Daniel and Chloe (right)

Rajah from Aladdin

Rajah is Jasmine’s beloved tiger in Aladdin. He is fiercely protective on her but kind and loving to her. We’ll just go ahead and say that we do not advocate for tigers being pets. They are dangerous predators. However, he is a great character in the movie Aladdin. Tigers are very interesting animals. There are several fun facts about their stripes. Here are a few! No two tigers have the same stripes. Each tiger has their own unique stripe pattern just like humans have unique fingerprints. Those stripes also appear on their skin. So even if you were looking a bald tiger, would could still tell who is who.

Sabor from Tarzan

Sabor is a leopard you might not recognize by name, but he is a threat to the gorillas in the movie Tarzan. The leopard we have here at TCWR, Selbit, might not seem as fierce as Sabor at first glance, but he his moments where he reminds us that he really is a predator. He can be seen in our discovery area. The spots Selbit has on his fur are called rosettes.

Renato Manchas from Zootopia

Renato Manchas is a minor character in the movie Zootopia. He is a chauffeur who goes “savage”. He is a black jaguar, which we have here! Bagheera is our black jaguar that is visible in our Discovery Area. Jaguars have the strongest bite force of the big cats, at 1500 pounds per square inch. Bagheera is no exception to that. He’s a scary looking guy, but we love him.

Shenzi, Banzai, Ed from The Lion King

These aren’t cats or bears, but taking it back to The Lion King, you might recognize this infamous trio, Shenzi, Banzai, and Ed, the spotted hyenas. Have you ever heard that hyenas laugh? If you hear a hyena laughing, it isn’t a good sound. It means they are stressed or feel threatened. You would want to avoid causing spotted hyena Rambo to make a laughing sound if you were to visit him at Rescue Ridge.