Why does meat taste good?

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This is a dodo bird:

Not much of a looker, is he? Well, the dodo has one thing going for him, his meat tastes absolutely horrible. It is stringy, and not palatable in the least... Or so said the sailors who were forced to survive on dodo meat while on the island of Mauritius. They still ate the birds in droves, but what truly did them in was the pigs and rats that got loose on the island, which ate their eggs from the nest. (They laid their eggs on the ground, as they didn’t have any natural predators on the island) They went extinct sometime in the 1660’s.

Perhaps they could have been saved, and survive to this day. If the sailors found them tasty, it might have made them put in the effort to capture some, and farm them. If these sailors turned farmers were raising dodos as a food source, and discovered pigs or rats eating the eggs, they would most decidedly take efforts to stop their livestock from being killed, and would have ensured a captive population survived.

In fact, some species are completely extinct in the wild, and only raised in captivity. You may be thinking that I am referring to some rare animal that is critically endangered in a zoo, and these certainly exist, but I am referring to something else. This is an Aurochs:

Okay, this painting is a bit old, let me find something a bit newer. This is an Aurochs:

Look familiar? The meat from these is quite tasty, and, as you can see from the first painting, it is likely that even our earliest cave dwelling ancestors feasted on the meat of wild Aurochs. Of course, they no longer exist in the wild, because we hunted them to extinction, in Poland, in the 1600’s (hmm, the same time we drove dodos to extinction… coincidence?) Well, we enjoyed the taste of beef so much, that our ancient ancestors kept trying to figure out how to cage them and keep a ready supply of beef for consumption.

This proved difficult, as these beast were massive, standing taller than a man, and at sizes that only Paul Bunyan’s faithful blue companion could rival in more modern times. So, man tried to capture the runts of the herd, and keep these in captivity, as it was easier to fence them in. These same early farmers discovered that by eating the biggest Aurochs, and letting the smaller ones live longer, and reproduce, they could get herds of smaller, and more docile animals.

When the last of the really big, wild Aurochs were hunted to extinction, the world had a fairly large number of cattle in captivity, in large herds. In fact, nowadays, or at least as of 2013, the FAO estimated the world’s population of cattle at around 1.47 billion!! This means, that by being tasty and easy to maintain, domesticated cattle have extremely high numbers, while their wild ancestors are gone. American Bison(which everyone in America refers to as Buffalo), were nearly hunted to extinction, except for a small herd that happened to be surrounded by a national park. Now, a number of ranchers have started to breed herds of American Bison, as Buffalo burgers are being hailed as a low fat and more sustainable form of beef that is adapted to the American landscape, and requires less water and crops to raise. The American bison has seen a resurgence in population at the same time.

So, by tasting good, Beef, and American Bison, have managed not to go the way of the Dodo.