Good gracious! America's always enjoyed a tasty bird—and that hasn't changed a bit! In fact, Americans are gobbling down that chicken—now more than ever! Man alive!

Beef: It's What's For Dinner—Provided You Can Afford Its Record Price These Days. That is the slogan that Big Beef doesn't want you hearing. But facts are facts, folks: "Retail beef prices, now near record levels, will likely rise 4% to 5% this year following a 10% increase in 2011."

Reality television has folded in on itself so many times, parody versions are barely distinguishable from the real thing. Case in point: The contestants of Survivor with their hands tied behind their backs, tearing at pig carcasses with their mouths. With their gaping maws full of animal flesh, they race to a pair of bins to spit the meat out. They are judged by the amount of meat they hoarded.

British website Veggiedates makes it clear right in its tagline: "Find your veggie dates." Sounds hot! Until you find out that the site was actually full of grease-hungry meat-scarfing savages. Sounds not!

It turns out Tyrannosaurus rex, the big, dumb badass of the Cretaceous Period, had a shorter cousin. Palaeontologists have identified the skull and jaw bones of a newly discovered breed they're calling Zhuchengtyrannus magnus—which is Latin for "Tyrant from Zhucheng," the Chinese province where the fossils were found.

Patriotic American beef is under attack! I mean, not the cows. The cows are actually happy about it. Per capita beef consumption in the U.S. has fallen by a third in the past 35 years. So the National Cattlemen's Beef Association is training ranchers and other assorted beef-friendly carnivores to fight back using the tools of public relations.

Though bears "look disturbingly like people when skinned," their meat resembles "the darkest part of a high-quality pork shoulder," reports Hank Shaw. He made Siberian bear dumplings and found them pleasingly juicy, much like a Tibetan yak meat momo. [Atlantic]

"Her bodice looks like the outside of the rib. Over the shoulder looks like it does come from a shoulder. There are no expensive cuts here, no real steaks. The best you've got is the flank steak on her head."

PETA's surprisingly reasonable complaint about Lady Gaga's meat dress: "After time spent under the TV lights, it would smell like the rotting flesh that it is and likely be crawling in maggots." That's why I prefer mink stoles.

What does whale taste like? Moose, apparently.

The hardcore animal byproducts trend reaches its tipping point with pig brains of "'soft, creamy consistency,' almost like a flan, and 'a musty, visceral flavor,'" served by a man in a pirate costume at a Brooklyn dinner party.