If it looks like a duck, and walks like a duck...

Last night at the Walkabout Pub on Whyte Avenue, I partook in a little Ostrich Burger. I have to say I was more than a little shocked. After all, I was sort of in the mood for a chicken burger. But if you click the link, you'll see that Ostrich meat is in fact very similar to beef.

Whoa there, hold the phone! That doesn't make any sense.

Wikipedia assures me that the Ostrich is a bird of the family Struthionidae. If you want to go a little farther back you can go to its zoological class, which is Aves. Aves are birds. Also a member of the bird class is the humble Gallus gallus, commonly known as... wait for it... chicken!

Beef is Bos taurus, a member of the Bovidae family and of class Mammalia. They don't link up with Ostriches until Phylum level. So why the hell isn't Ostrich meat more like chicken?

This concerns me because I've always been curious as to what Dolphin meat tastes like. Now dolphins are also of the class Mammalia, but I've heard tell that they taste more like seafood than like salty beef, which was always my dolphin-eating fantasy.

The photos on this page certainly make it seem like dolphin meat can be a straight-up substitution for bifsteak, but with the ostrich thing I'm now a little wary.