House sparrow
Passer domesticus
— Where the name comes from
Passer is Latin for sparrow, and it is the word Catullus used for his Lesbia’s little bird in two poems that every schoolchild in Italy still translates. Domesticus means “of the house”: no species has a name that states its habitat more plainly. It has lived where we live for so long that hardly anyone thinks of it as a wild animal.
— Facts
- Group
- Birds · Aves
- Order
- Passerines
- Habitat
- Towns, villages, farms, anywhere with buildings and grain
- Range
- Native to Eurasia, now on every continent except Antarctica
- Size
- 14–18 cm, wingspan 19–25 cm, 24–40 g
- Diet
- Seeds, grain, crumbs, insects for the nestlings
- Lifespan
- 3 years in the wild
— Characteristics
- 01
It nests only in cavities in buildings: without houses, it disappears.
- 02
It bathes in dust to rid itself of parasites.
- 03
It lives in noisy colonies and holds no real territory.
— What sets it apart
It has followed us for ten thousand years and its body shows it. Comparing the genome of urban sparrows with that of the wild Central Asian subspecies turns up two precise differences: an extra copy of the amylase gene, the enzyme that digests the starch of cereals, and a collagen variant that makes the skull and bill sturdier for cracking grain. It is the same amylase change that separates the dog from the wolf. Nobody domesticated the sparrow: it domesticated itself, following the wheat.
