White Stork
| White Stork | |||
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| シュバシコウ | |||
| Character Data | |||
| Romaji | Shubashikou
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| Debut | Kemono Friends Pavilion | ||
| Animal Data | |||
| Scientific Name | Ciconia ciconia
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| Distribution | Africa, Europe, Southwestern Asia
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| Diet | Carnivore
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| Avg. Lifespan | 22 Years
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| Read More | White stork
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| Conservation | 
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| White Stork | |||
|---|---|---|---|
|
| |||
| シュバシコウ | |||
| Character Data | |||
| Romaji | Shubashikou
| ||
| Debut | Kemono Friends Pavilion | ||
| Animal Data | |||
| Scientific Name | Ciconia ciconia
| ||
| Distribution | Africa, Europe, Southwestern Asia
| ||
| Diet | Carnivore
| ||
| Avg. Lifespan | 22 Years
| ||
| Read More | White stork
| ||
| Conservation |
| ||
| White Stork | Pavilion | KF3 |
White Stork is a type of bird Friend.
Appearance
White Stork has long white hair that goes to her hips and large headwings that are partially bent inward. She wears a black and blue hairclip on the right side, the same blue as her eyes, to represent the shape of a real stork's eyes. The hairclip is positioned above long and straight red side-bangs, which represent her beak. She wears a white suit jacket with white buttons over a black shirt and a white tied neck scarf. Her long tail feathers are widely spaced like primary feathers and are knee-length. White Stork also wears a short black pleated skirt with white pantyhose that become red at about mid-thigh and downward. She wears loafer-style shoes in dark red and carries a white tote bag with the Kemono Friends logo.
Series Appearances
| Media | Role | |
|---|---|---|
| 2018 | Kemono Friends Pavilion | ↪ Observable character |
| 2019 | Kemono Friends 3 | ↪ Minor character, playable. |
In Real Life
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The white stork is a large migrating bird native to Europe and the Middle East in the summer and sub-Saharan Africa and India in the winter. They stand around 1 m tall on average and have a wingspan of 2 m. Their plumage is mostly white except for the black wings. Their beak and legs are red. Originally they nested in tree and on rocks but with increased human presence they usually build them on chimneys, towers, rooftops or nest platforms specifically made for conservation purposes. The white stork is a carnivore with a broad diet, with its prey species including fish, frogs, insects, mice, moles, molluscs, reptiles, voles, worms, and young birds.
White storks often form small nesting colonies, granting safety in numbers to each brood. Individual nests will be reused year after year, with more nesting material being added annually; however, in the event that a brood fails to reach maturity, a nest will be abandoned. White storks are seasonally monogamous, but do not mate for life. They usually lay four eggs which are incubated as soon as the first is laid, so that the offspring hatch at different times instead of simultaneously. This usually means an advantage for the oldest chick, as it will achieve the largest size the fastest, but parent storks fed the chicks directly so as to ensure the youngest will not starve to death or be killed by a competitive older sibling. In times of food shortages, the parents may kill their weakest offspring to focus their efforts on, and thus give better odds of survival to, at least one chick.
White storks are one of the most studied migrating birds. Originally, people believed they changed form and became mice or other birds or simply hibernated. Only when injured individuals with African arrows stuck in them were found back in Europe and juveniles were ringed to track their movements did people understand their migratory nature. One of these rare so-called Pfeilstörche was found in modern Mecklenburg-Vorpommern in 1822, stuffed and is now on display in the University of Rostock. The birds begin heading southwards in August and September. They congregate in large flocks and head back to Europe in March. They avoid the Mediterranean Sea by either going west over Iberia and the Strait of Gibraltar or eastward via the Bosporus.
White storks are seen as a positive sign in most cultures they came into contact with. Their large size, preying on vermin and their nests close to humans or even on rooftops made them ideal symbols of protection. The hebrew word for white stork means "merciful" or "kind". Both ancient Greece and Rome saw them as devoted parents and many myths formed surrounding them. Islam reveres them as the birds migrate via their holy site Mecca annually. Their nests were said to protect against fires in Germany and they appear to be especially beloved in west and east Slavic cultures where they're said to bring harmony to families on whose property they nest. They're the national birds of Ukraine, Poland, Belarus and Lithuania. The common belief that storks deliver babies may derive from their large size and high flight altitude, being seen as a connection between earth and the heavens, where they take unborn souls back in the spring.