• Inspiration from the Disney animated classics did not begin and end with The Jungle Book (1967). As director Jon Favreau explained: "We went back to films like Bambi (1942) to see how they best used elements, because I wanted to use different elements in this." He went on: "I wanted air, fire, water, and earth, and Bambi uses seasons and weather, and using different types of day-opportunities that this filmmaking style allows you. So we looked at films like Bambi, we looked at films like The Lion King (1994)." It's true-throughout The Jungle Book, you can sense the legacy of these earlier films and, thanks to the nature of the story (roughly broken up into vignettes), the changing seasons effect is vital and dazzlingly realized.
• The little armadillo-like creature in Baloo's gang of silly sidekicks is a pangolin, which belongs to a unique animal family. Its closest relatives are not armadillos, but Carnivorans like lions, tigers, bears, wolves, etc.
• In The Jungle Book (1967), King Louie - a character created by Walt Disney's people, not by Rudyard Kipling - was an orangutan. In this film, he's a Gigantopithecus, an ancestor of the orangutan whose range is believed to have included parts of India. This change in species was made to make the film more fantastic, since it would be a good way to represent him as King of the Monkeys, and since orangutans are not native to India. Despite this, the film does still feature some animals not native to India, like Peccaries and Red-Eyed Tree Frogs.
• Most animals in the film are based on real wild animals that largely found in the Indian subcontinent as per the original novel but most are increased in their relative size by at least 30% from the real-life counterparts compared to Mowgli to make him look even physically disadvantaged. This is for obvious reason in menacing figures such as Shere Khan and Kaa but even friendly characters towards Mowgli such as the wolf pack or Bagheera loom over him whereas real-life Indian races of wolves or leopards are relatively small and average rather smaller than an adult human for example. Even King Louie appears considerably larger than real-life Gigantopithecus were, at up to 9 and a half feet tall, whereas Louie appears to be perhaps 15 feet tall.
• When Shere Khan is telling Raksha's wolf pups about how the cuckoo bird gets another bird to raise its chicks, the scene transitions to Mowgli creating vines for Baloo. As the camera tracks down, the audience see a large cuckoo bird chick being fed by a much smaller mother bird of a different species.

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