Northern White-Faced Owl
Northern White-Faced Owl
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| アフリカオオコノハズク | |||
| Character Data | |||
| AKA | Konoha-hakase, Professor Konoha
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| Romaji | Afurika Ōkonohazuku
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| Debut | Kemono Friends (2015 Game) | ||
| Animal Data | |||
| Scientific Name | Ptilopsis leucotis
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| Distribution | Central Africa
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| Diet | Carnivore
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| Avg. Lifespan | Up to 30 years
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| Read More | Northern white-faced owl
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| Conservation | 
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| Northern White-Faced Owl | Anime | Season 2 | Festival (Costume) | Pavilion (Gen 2) | KF3 (V2) | Kingdom | Nexon Game | Gallery |
Northern White-Faced Owl, also known as Professor Konoha, is an owl Friend who made appearances in the Kemono Friends anime as well as the original mobile game.
Appearance
Northern White-Faced Owl has short steely-gray hair, with darker gray tones on the top of her head and to the sides of her bangs (dark blue-gray in the anime and Pavilion), and a large area of white crowning the forehead. Further detailings in her hair represent her animal counterpart's characteristics; the beak is represented by her yellow-tinted forelock, the patterned areas on the sides of her head serve as her wings, and two upward tufts of hair in-between her bangs mimic those above the bird's eyes. Her owl's tail is striped gray and dark-gray, and her eyes are amber.
She wears a buttoned coat with a fur-like collar, pockets, and rounded cuffs. Her jacket is patterned similarly to her wings, with sparse dark-grey hatching. She also wears white leggings, light-yellow gloves, and light-yellow Mary Janes; the latter two of which include white and grey tints at the ends to resemble the owl's talons.
Her Nexon artwork (at right) further depicts her wielding a wooden geologist's hammer. Her anime and Pavilion depictions remove the white/gray tint from her shoes and omit the gloves entirely.
Series Appearances
| Media | Role | First Appearance | |
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| 2015 | Nexon Game | ↪ Major character, obtainable | |
| 2017 | Kemono Friends (2017 Anime) | ↪ Major character | S1E07: Japari Library |
| 2018 | Kemono Friends Pavilion | ↪ Minor character, observable in multiple forms | |
| 2018 | Kemono Friends Puzzle Puzzle Gokko | Minor character | |
| 2018 | Kemono Friends Festival | ↪ Minor character, obtainable in multiple forms | |
| 2018 | Kemono Friends Picross | Appears in multiple puzzles | |
| 2019 | Kemono Friends 3 | ↪ Minor character with multiple obtainable versions | |
| 2022 | Kemono Friends Kingdom | ↪ Minor character, obtainable | |
Minor Appearances
Kemono Friends Puzzle Puzzle Gokko
Northern White-Faced Owl appears as a minor character in Puzzle Puzzle Gokko. She appears on top of the board on some levels of the game as a still picture of her anime model.
Kemono Friends Picross
Northern White-Faced Owl appears in two different puzzles of Kemono Friends Picross, wherein the player can obtain a picture of the Friend by solving a puzzle.
Tobu Japari Park
Northern White-Faced Owl appeared in Tobu Japari Park, an interactive promotional collaboration between Kemono Friends and Tobu Zoo.
In Real Life
The northern white-faced owl is found in a band across Africa between the Sahara and the Equator. Like all owls, they can rotate their heads as much as 270° by virtue of their flexible necks; these birds are equipped with 14 neck vertebrae, compared to the seven found in humans. This adaptation is likely consequent of the way the owl's eyes evolved, being an oval shape rather than a sphere; while this shape grants the owl incredible vision, it also means they cannot rotate their eyes within their sockets. As such, the owl must move its entire head in order to look left, right, up, or down.
Northern white-faced owls have a unique set of defense mechanisms which vary by the type of threat being faced. When faced with a threat comparable in size to itself, the bird flares its wings to make itself appear larger in an effort to intimidate its foe. When faced with something significantly larger than itself, its response is to instead make itself appear smaller, as achieved by pulling its feathers inwards, elongating its body, and narrowing its eyes to thin slits. Beyond simply making the owl harder to detect, it is thought that this may be a form of environmental camouflage, as its altered profile may cause the owl to be perceived as a stick or branch.