So Staton, then at the Museum of Comparative Zoology at Harvard University, set out to determine if a creature's taste is something that it evolves independently, or inherits from an ancient ancestor. He went to supermarkets that sell exotic meats, gathered up as many types of meats as he could find, and began his gustatory exploits. He then plotted the flavor results on a phylogenetic tree, a diagram that shows which kinds of animals evolved from which other animals. It's a task he approached lightheartedly. Taste is not something that seems to have evolved independently in creatures that have similar tastes, he said.
Muscle is muscle.
Certainly, almost all birds taste like chicken. The only odd bird Staton found was the ostrich, which has a more beef-like flavor. He attributed the difference to the dense system of blood vessels required to feed the big bird's muscular legs. Mammal meat was a little harder to fit into a pattern. He maintains it's impossible to determine whether the beefy flavors of hoofed mammals evolved before pork-like flavors.