At the beginning of time, animals like the Dog, the Ox, and the Horse go to work for the Man. However, the Camel is “most ‘scruciating idle” (4), staying alone in the desert and refusing to participate. Due to his laziness, the other animals have to work harder, and they become frustrated. The Camel is rude and anti-social, saying nothing but “Humph” when others try to approach him and laughing at them from afar when he sees them working. The Camel is also vain, spending his days staring at his own reflection in a desert pool. 

Finally, the Djinn in charge of the desert causes the Camel’s flat back to grow into a round hump. This causes the Camel to speak for the first time, complaining that he surely cannot work with the large hump. However, the Djinn tells him the “humph” will allow him to work for three days without stopping to eat or drink; it is the amount of time that the Camel allowed the other animals to work without him. The hump, then, is punishment for the Camel’s laziness and vanity, but also for his willingness to let others work in his stead.

When the world was new, the Rhinoceros had tight-fitting skin with no folds or creases. However, his manners were just as bad then as they are now. One day, he finds a cake that a Parsee man has baked and eats it whole. A few weeks later, he takes off his skin, which has several buttons, to swim in the sea during a heatwave. He has forgotten all about the cake, and never spoke to the Parsee man about it, indicating his selfish nature. 

While the Rhinoceros is swimming, the Parsee man places crumbs in his skin. The crumbs make the Rhinoceros itch terribly when he puts his skin back on, and he scratches until his skin stretches in great folds and the buttons fall off. The cake crumbs still tickle him and that is why he still has “a very bad temper” (9). The crumbs are punishment for his “bad manners,” but the Rhinoceros is still grumpy and rude, suggesting he didn’t learn his lesson.

At the beginning of the story, both the Leopard and the Ethiopian man are “‘sclusively greyish-brownish-yellowish” (11) to blend in with the High Veldt grasslands they call home. They hunt together as a team, and while the Ethiopian man is markedly smarter than the Leopard, using “long words” and able to puzzle out Baviaan the Baboon’s riddle to change their “spots,” there is no sense that the Ethiopian man is in any way in control of the Leopard. Other stories show man’s dominion over the natural world, and this sense of equality between the Leopard and the Ethiopian man, who refer to one another as “brothers,” marks a stark contrast in the relationship between man and beast.

When their prey animals vanish from the High Veldt, the Leopard and the Ethiopian man leave their home in search of them. They reach a forest, where they are surprised to find the Zebra and the Giraffe have developed dark stripes and spots to blend in with the dappled shade. The Ethiopian man decides that he will change the color of his skin to blend in as well, and paints on the Leopard’s spots with the remaining black on his fingers. They live happily in the forest, “quite content” with their changes, indicating the importance of adapting to your circumstances and being flexible.

The Elephant’s Child is a curious young elephant who is always being spanked for asking too many questions. One day, he asks all of his family members what the Crocodile eats for dinner, but none of them will answer his question. Tired of being spanked for his “‘satiable curtiosity,” he sets off to find the answer for himself. 

Eventually, the Elephant’s Child meets a real live Crocodile, who bites the Elephant’s Child’s short “bulgy” nose and pulls until it turns into a long trunk. The Elephant’s Child escapes, but his nose won’t shrink back to its normal size. However, what seems to be a cautionary tale about the dangers of being too curious soon turns out to paint curiosity as a virtue: The trunk turns out to be quite useful, and soon all of the Elephant’s Child’s family wants one, too.

In the early days of the world, the Kangaroo is a small “woolly” animal with four short legs. He has “inordinate” pride and asks three separate gods to make him “different from all other animals,” “wonderfully popular,” and “very truly run after” (24). 

To make this desire come true, one of the gods has the Dingo chase the Kangaroo until he is exhausted and his back legs become large and strong. The Kangaroo gets his wish—he is “different” from the other animals, just not in the way he was expecting. When the Dingo finally stops chasing him, he is tired and hungry and not at all concerned with his new legs. Like the Camel, the Kangaroo’s story cautions against the vices of pride and vanity. However, it also suggests that changes might not be as desirable once they take place.

The Stickly-Prickly Hedgehog and the Slow-Solid Tortoise are friends that are both threatened by the Painted Jaguar. They trick the Painted Jaguar out of eating them the first time, then join forces to avoid danger in the future. The Hedgehog teaches the Tortoise how to curl up for protection, and the Tortoise teaches the Hedgehog how to dive and swim. They practice these new skills so much that they slowly begin to acquire each other’s traits until they have become armadillos, a new animal somewhere between a hedgehog and a tortoise. The Painted Jaguar is so confused and alarmed that he leaves them alone forever and never tries to eat them again. 

Like the Whale and the Mariner, the Hedgehog and the Tortoise’s victory represents the triumph of wit and intelligence over size and strength. Their relationship also suggests the importance of relying on others and sharing skills and resources. Together, they are able to become stronger and more capable of surviving.

Taffimai Metallumai, whose name means “[s]mall-person-without-any-manners-who-ought-to-be-spanked” (35), is one of the only named human characters, and she appears in two separate stories. Taffy is a Neolithic girl who lives with her mother and father in a comfortable cave. She is her parents’ own “Best Beloved” and they are “all three very happy” (35). 

Mirroring the close father-daughter relationship between the narrator and Best Beloved throughout Just So Stories, Taffy especially loves spending time with her father. Taffy is a very clever girl. In the first story, she befriends a stranger and sends him on an expedition to find her father’s spear at home after he breaks his while fishing. The stranger doesn’t speak the same language, so she helpfully draws him a picture explaining. Even though her drawing is misinterpreted by everyone who sees it, the chief of their tribe congratulates her on her “great invention” that, in the future, “men will call […] writing” (41). 

In the following story, Taffy and her father create pictures that represent sounds and become the alphabet. Although they are working together and her father is the one who sees the potential in their project, Taffy is the first to think of writing out the sounds of their language. Her contributions to developing key elements of human society like the alphabet illustrate how little girls can do important things and leave a lasting mark on the world.

Pau Amma the Crab is another animal that suffers the consequences of his pride and defiance. When the Eldest Magician is assigning the first animals their roles at the beginning of the world, the Crab doesn’t wait for his instructions, slipping into the sea unseen by anyone but the Man’s daughter, muttering that he “will play [his] play alone in the deep waters” (53) and refusing to be obedient to Man like the other animals. The Crab doesn’t have malicious intent, but his disobedience causes an imbalance in the world: Due to his large size, he upsets the waters of the Sea every time he leaves his cave for food. 

When he learns what a disruption he is causing, he feels very important and threatens to churn the waters even more. However, the Eldest Magician reminds the Crab of his vulnerability by taking his shell off with a magic spell. They reach a deal, and the Magician gives the Crab his shell back except for one month every year, when he will lose his shell to remind him to stay humble.

The Cat is “the wildest of all the wild animals” (62) even before any of the animals have been tamed. He is fiercely independent, “[h]e walk[s] by himself, and all places [are] alike to him” (62), something he takes great pride in. However, part of him also longs for the connection and creature comforts that domestication offers. 

As each of the animals journeys to the cave to make a deal with the Woman, the Cat refuses to accompany them, but he sneaks behind and hides in the bushes to watch the exchanges. He decides to make his own deal with the Woman and outsmarts her, allowing him to enter the cave on his own terms. However, he fails to make a similar deal with the Man and the Dog, and he has to suffer their perpetual antagonism. The Cat’s refusal to sacrifice his independence means that he isn’t fully accepted into human society; however, he is the only animal who succeeds in defying man and avoids any punishment.