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Kaa (Hindi: का) the Indian Python is a fictional animal character in the Mowgli stories of Rudyard Kipling.

First introduced in the story "Kaa's Hunting" in The Jungle Book, Kaa is a huge and powerful snake, more than a hundred years old and still in his prime. Bagheera and Baloo enlist Kaa's help to rescue Mowgli when the man-cub is captured by the Bandar-log (monkeys) and taken to an abandoned human city. Kaa breaks down the wall of the building in which Mowgli is imprisoned and uses his serpentine hypnosis to draw the monkeys toward his waiting jaws. Bagheera and Baloo are also hypnotized, but Mowgli is immune because he is human, and breaks the spell on his friends.

In The Second Jungle Book Kaa appears in the first half of the story "The King's Ankus". He and Mowgli spend some time relaxing, bathing and wrestling (Kipling may perhaps have been inspired to write this scene by Lord Leighton's statue Athlete Wrestling with a Python). Then Kaa persuades Mowgli to visit a treasure chamber guarded by an old cobra beneath the ancient city. The cobra tries to kill Mowgli but its poison has dried up. Mowgli takes a jewelled item away as a souvenir, not realising the trouble it will cause in the second half of the story, and Kaa departs.

In "Red Dog" Mowgli asks Kaa for help when his wolf pack is threatened by rampaging dhole (the red dogs of the title). In one of the most striking scenes in the series, Kaa goes into a trance so that he can search his century-long memory for a stratagem to defeat the dogs:

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“The dhole do not turn and their throats are hot,” said Kaa. “There will be neither Manling nor Wolf-cub when that hunting is done, but only dry bones.” “Alala! If we die, we die. It will be most good hunting. But my stomach is young, and I have not seen many Rains. I am not wise nor strong. Hast thou a better plan, Kaa?” “I have seen a hundred and a hundred Rains. Ere Hathi cast his milk-tushes my trail was big in the dust. By the First Egg, I am older than many trees, and I have seen all that the Jungle has done.” “But this is new hunting,” said Mowgli. “Never before have the dhole crossed our trail.” “What is has been. What will be is no more than a forgotten year striking backward. Be still while I count those my years.” For a long hour Mowgli lay back among the coils, while Kaa, his head motionless on the ground, thought of all that he had seen and known since the day he came from the egg. The light seemed to go out of his eyes and leave them like stale opals, and now and again he made little stiff passes with his head, right and left, as though he were hunting in his sleep. Mowgli dozed quietly, for he knew that there is nothing like sleep before hunting, and he was trained to take it at any hour of the day or night. Then he felt Kaa’s back grow bigger and broader below him as the huge python puffed himself out, hissing with the noise of a sword drawn from a steel scabbard. “I have seen all the dead seasons,” Kaa said at last, “and the great trees and the old elephants, and the rocks that were bare and sharp-pointed ere the moss grew. Art thou still alive, Manling?” “It is only a little after moonset,” said Mowgli. I do not understand--” “Hssh! I am again Kaa. I knew it was but a little time. Now we will go to the river, and I will show thee what is to be done against the dhole.”

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With Kaa's help Mowgli tricks the dhole into attacking prematurely. Kaa takes no part in the resulting battle, but Mowgli and the wolves finally kill all the dhole, though not without grievous losses.

Kaa makes his last appearance in "The Spring Running", as the teenage Mowgli reluctantly prepares to leave the jungle for the last time. "It is hard to cast the skin", he tells Mowgli, but Mowgli knows he must cast the skin of his old life in order to grow a new one.

Kaa is one of Mowgli's mentors. He is one of the three who sing for Mowgli "The Outsong" of the jungle.

The 1967 Disney animated movie The Jungle Book does not follow Kipling's story very closely. Its biggest departure is in making Kaa, voiced by Sterling Holloway, a cowardly comic villain. He twice hypnotises and wraps his long coils around Mowgli, once near the beginning of the film (he also hypnotises Bagheera for hitting him) and again about two-thirds through, whilst seducively singing "Trust in Me" and making Mowgli sleepwalk on his body, before eventually wrapping his tail around Mowgli. His method of hypnosis is through eye contact, and since the film this has been parodied many times. The only reason for the change seems to be that the studio felt that the American public would not accept a snake as a heroic character. Indeed, Disney virtually reprised the villainous Kaa with Sir Hiss (voiced by Terry-Thomas) in 1973's animated Robin Hood. Near the end of the movie, Kaa and Shere Khan the Tiger (the other main villain of the movie) have a tense yet friendly talk. The tiger thinks Kaa has wrapped around Mowgli in the tree top, but Kaa cleverly evades his many attempts to prove it, and finally convinces him that Mowgli is not there. It seems that Kaa and Shere Khan are quite equal in strength, for Kaa seems to be a little scared of Shere Khan, and the tiger himself quickly avoids eye contact when Kaa tried to hypnotize him. Every appearance by him ends with Mowgli pushing his coils out of the tree. Of course, that pulls his whole body along with him, until he falls in a heap on the ground floor. Now you know why humans and snakes (snakes and Man-Cubs) are natural enemies! Then, when he tries to go, he gets a knot in his tail, pulls it out, and his coils flop into an accordion! Then he slinks away, out of shape, into the reeds or the trees, saying, "Ooh, this is going to slow down my s-s-slithering."

A younger version of Disney's Kaa appeared on the 1996 animated series Jungle Cubs. His voice was done by Jim Cummings and was done again in The Jungle Book 2. Kaa never appeared and was never planned to appear in TaleSpin, but he appeared briefly in House of Mouse and in the feature film House of Villains.

Kaa returns in The Jungle Book 2 somewhere in the middle of the film. Here, he tries to simply eat Mowgli this time without hypnotizing him. Mowgli was just taken by Baloo the Bear back into the jungle because they missed each other too much and began singing "Bear Neccesties" in celebration. Kaa popped up everywhere and tried to eat Mowgli whole throughout the film, but something would go wrong and he would end up hurt, eventually causing him to give up on Mowgli. Later, Mowgli's crush, Shanti, was trying to find Mowgli and bring him home to the village safely, but while she was doing so, her torch actually burned Kaa's stomach slightly, causing Kaa to look down and see her. He quickly scared her into a state of submission, and just as quickly hypnotized her. "Exss-cussse meeeee. Are you lost little one? Ah-hmm-hmmm. Are you hung-gry? I am ssss-starved. Hmm-hmmm-hmmm. " He then wraps his tail around her neck and gets her to stand on a boulder, and tries to swallow her whole, but her 4-year old cousin, Ranjan, gets her away from Kaa, hits her head the floor( getting her out of the trance in the process), and he instead swallows the rock Shanti was on. Ranjan then proceeds to beat Kaa mercilessly with a stick, scolding him for trying to eat Shanti. Shanti pulls him away and Kaa gives up completely. Later he meets, once again, with Shere Khan. Seeking revenge on Mowgli, Shere Khan asks him where Mowgli is. Kaa almost tells him, but his fear of Shere Khan causes him to lie. After that, Kaa was never seen for the rest of the film. In The Jungle Book 2, Kaa seems to be more scared of Shere Khan then he was in the first.

• Like all of the main Jungle Book Characters, Kaa is used as a name for an adult leader in many Cub Scout Packs.
• Kaa also makes a brief cameo in the Fables comic book. In the comic he is in the hunt for Reynard the Fox along with the rest of the rebelling non-human Fables and is asked by King Louie if he had seen Reynard.