Really?? the situation's never come up in any of my games presumably because both players know that a mouse can kill a mouse in a lake.

It's interesting, maybe some other players have ideas. In "normal" Chinese chess there exists a similar problem that a player can only win with specific combinations of pieces, if they dont memorise the combinations it's impossible to efficiently conduct the middlegame. Due to this inherrent drawishness and the facility to be able to agree draws, it seems excessive to also allow one side to force a draw in an otherwise lost position. Regarding the Tromyr-Redsales game mentioned earlier, (I wrote "black" when I meant "white"), of course one cant criticise Redsales for playing within the rules but I would certainly like to see this rule given a serious review.
A further point concerning shogi, in shogi the players can not agree a draw. A threefold repetition (same player to move, same position on the board and same pieces in hand) voluntarily undertaken by both sides ie not with continuous checks by one side, is considered a 'no contest' and the game is replayed with reversed colours. The only valid draws are jishogi, though effectively, at the professional level, these too amount to no contest.

I played a game in which I had available a winning plan, it was clear that it couldn't be stopped but would take around 40 moves to play out, I dont think jungle is a game suited to long time limits (or auto-vacation).

I see what you mean. I guess if you transfer your leopard to the central path before moving your dog to attack his wolf, the two fronted attack would be insufficient?

I'm surprised that you didn't carry on against LightningBolt, it looks to me as if you could win by bringing your dog to F9, your wolf to D6 and then your leopard to B7.

That position looks to me like a win for black if the repetition is disallowed.

Such draws exist here in chess, but the rules of chess have no bearing on other games. The closest games to jungle are Chinese and Korean "chesses" I think repetition is illegal in both.

For example if the same position is going to be forced by the same move by the player, that move becomes impossible. If you're going to have shogi at BrainKing this is an important point as repeating position three times with continuous checks loses for the checking player in shogi.

I think in such a situation the higher ranked piece should be prohibited from continuous attack. As is the case with continuous attack by white on the edge in tablut, the spirit of "draw" is contravened by one player forcing the other's moves.

Good point about the elephants, I never noticed that as a justification.

Last night I asked a Chinese friend about this game and to illustrate I started drawing out a board. It was interesting that even as I started drawing it he still thought I was talking about tsiang ki, normal Chinese chess and it occured to me that the fixed nature of the den and the surrounding traps are very similar to the palace and palace guards in tsiang ki and there's the further similarity of the lakes with the river. At first impression this seems a strong indicator that the game is of Chinese origin, a simplified children's version of the "adult" tsiang ki, not Indian, so I'm interested in the sources that give it as Indian. However, if jungle pre-dates tsiang ki, another possibility is that tsiang ki arose from a synthesis of jungle with chaturanga or mak ruk. There's a tendency for historians to want a simple linear progression in the history of "chess" so it's interesting that Chinese and Korean chesses show characteristics of jungle as well as the more typical chess characteristics, yet Japanese and pre-renaissance European chess share elements from mak ruk. It seems to me likely that there was something of a flux of co-existing games centred loosley around Burma before they took on their different fixed forms with further migration.

It's in order, stronger animals beat weaker animals, the only exception being that a rat beats an elephant. Strongest to weakest: elephant, lion, tiger, leopard, dog, wolf, cat, rat.

Yes.

Yes and pieces only move one space at a time so the traps are on the way to the dens.