Akela (Jungle Book)
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Akela, the great gray Lone Wolf, who led all the Pack by strength and cunning, lay out at full length on his rock, and below him sat forty or more wolves of every size and color
Good hunting all That keep the Jungle Law
—Master Word of Akela
Akela (occasionally called The Lone Wolf or Big Fox) is a fictional character featured in Rudyard Kipling's Mowgli stories collected in The Jungle Book and The Second Jungle Book. He is a wolf, chief of the Seeonee wolf pack and presides over the pack's council meetings. It is at such a meeting that the pack adopts the human cub Mowgli as one of its own and Akela becomes one of Mowgli's mentors. Akela means "alone" in Hindi, Urdu, and Punjabi.
Nine or ten years after Mowgli's adoption, his enemy Shere Khan the tiger, with the aid of some young wolves he has persuaded to support him, plans to depose Akela so that he will no longer be able to defend Mowgli. A wolf who becomes too old to hunt is traditionally driven out or killed by his pack. Akela is far from decrepit, but the young wolves deliberately drive a young, healthy buck deer toward him knowing that he will not be able to catch it. When the council meets to depose Akela, Mowgli defends him with a blazing branch and drives Shere Khan and his allies away.
After Shere Khan's departure the remaining wolves beg Akela to stay, but he refuses to remain pack leader and decides to hunt alone. Phao becomes the new pack leader, Mowgli returns to humanity, at least for a time, and Akela hunts alone. During this period Akela helps Mowgli to kill Shere Khan with the aid of the human village's buffalo herd.
Some years later, when Mowgli has been rejected by humanity and the pack is threatened with extinction by a rampaging pack of dhole Akela joins the battle and fights to the death, finally dying in Mowgli's company ("Red Dog", in The Second Jungle Book). Akela's death is a major factor in Mowgli's decision to finally return to human society at the age of 17.
[edit] Disney
In the Disney adaptation of The Jungle Book, Akela only has a brief role at the beginning of the film, when the council of wolves meet after Shere Kahn's return to the jungle to decide what to do about Mowgli's future. Acknowledging that the pack is not strong enough to stand up to Shere Kahn on their own, they decide to send Mowgli away, with Bagheera volunteering to take Mowgli back to the man-village.
A younger Akela also appeared with his mate, Leia, in an episode of the prequel cartoon Jungle Cubs, looking at the animal characters in their youth. In this episode, Akela and Leia run away from their old wolf pack as the pack leader wants Leia for himself, forcing the two younger wolves to escape and retreat to the old temple that serves as the groups' 'Cubhouse'. Although Shere Kahn initially objects to their presence, when the rest of the pack arrives, the young cubs agree to help Akela and Leia, driving the rest of the pack away. At the conclusion of the episode, Akela and Leia become the parents of a group of wolf cubs, with the rest of the characters being appointed the cubs' godfathers. Despite their evident closeness to the other cubs in this episode, Akela and Leia never appeared again in the series.
