The taipans are a genus of large, fast, highly venomous Australasian snakes of the family of elapids.
There are three known species: the coastal taipan (Oxyuranus scutellatus), the inland taipan (Oxyuranus microlepidotus) and a recently discovered third species, the Central Ranges taipan (Oxyuranus temporalis). The coastal taipan has two subspecies: the coastal taipan (Oxyuranus scutellatus scutellatus), found along the north-eastern coast of Queensland and the Papuan taipan (Oxyuranus scutellatus canni), found on the southern coast of Papua New Guinea. Their diet consists primarily of small mammals, especially rats and bandicoots.
One species, the inland taipan (Oxyuranus microlepidotus), which is endemic to Australia, has the most toxic venom of any terrestrial snake species worldwide (though the venom of some marine snakes is more toxic, i.e. has a lower ). Pseudonaja textilis intervenes between the inland and coastal taipan (Oxyuranus scutellatus) which has the third most toxic venom of any land snake. O. temporalis may be even more lethal, but has been less researched than other species of this genus. Toxicity is measured as LD50 in mg/kg for mice (human testing is obviously not possible). Venom yield also must be taken into account. The venom clots the victim's blood, blocking blood vessels and using up clotting factors. It is also highly neurotoxic. There were no known survivors of a Taipan bite before an antivenene was developed and, even then, victims often require extended periods of intensive care.
The coastal taipan (Oxyuranus scutellatus) is the third most venomous land snake in the world, and arguably the largest venomous snake in Australia. Its venom contains taicatoxin, a highly potent neurotoxin. The danger posed by the coastal taipan was brought to Australian public awareness in 1950, when young herpetologist Kevin Budden was fatally bitten in capturing the first specimen available for antivenom research. The coastal taipan is often considered to be one of the deadliest species in the world.
In several aspects of morphology, ecology and behavior, the coastal taipan is strongly convergent with an African elapid, Dendroaspis polylepis (the black mamba).
Category:Venomous snakes Category:Reptiles of Australia Category:Reptiles of Western Australia Category:Words and phrases of Australian Aboriginal origin
This text is licensed under the Creative Commons CC-BY-SA License. This text was originally published on Wikipedia and was developed by the Wikipedia community.
The World News (WN) Network, has created this privacy statement in order to demonstrate our firm commitment to user privacy. The following discloses our information gathering and dissemination practices for wn.com, as well as e-mail newsletters.
We do not collect personally identifiable information about you, except when you provide it to us. For example, if you submit an inquiry to us or sign up for our newsletter, you may be asked to provide certain information such as your contact details (name, e-mail address, mailing address, etc.).
When you submit your personally identifiable information through wn.com, you are giving your consent to the collection, use and disclosure of your personal information as set forth in this Privacy Policy. If you would prefer that we not collect any personally identifiable information from you, please do not provide us with any such information. We will not sell or rent your personally identifiable information to third parties without your consent, except as otherwise disclosed in this Privacy Policy.
Except as otherwise disclosed in this Privacy Policy, we will use the information you provide us only for the purpose of responding to your inquiry or in connection with the service for which you provided such information. We may forward your contact information and inquiry to our affiliates and other divisions of our company that we feel can best address your inquiry or provide you with the requested service. We may also use the information you provide in aggregate form for internal business purposes, such as generating statistics and developing marketing plans. We may share or transfer such non-personally identifiable information with or to our affiliates, licensees, agents and partners.
We may retain other companies and individuals to perform functions on our behalf. Such third parties may be provided with access to personally identifiable information needed to perform their functions, but may not use such information for any other purpose.
In addition, we may disclose any information, including personally identifiable information, we deem necessary, in our sole discretion, to comply with any applicable law, regulation, legal proceeding or governmental request.
We do not want you to receive unwanted e-mail from us. We try to make it easy to opt-out of any service you have asked to receive. If you sign-up to our e-mail newsletters we do not sell, exchange or give your e-mail address to a third party.
E-mail addresses are collected via the wn.com web site. Users have to physically opt-in to receive the wn.com newsletter and a verification e-mail is sent. wn.com is clearly and conspicuously named at the point of
collection.If you no longer wish to receive our newsletter and promotional communications, you may opt-out of receiving them by following the instructions included in each newsletter or communication or by e-mailing us at michaelw(at)wn.com
The security of your personal information is important to us. We follow generally accepted industry standards to protect the personal information submitted to us, both during registration and once we receive it. No method of transmission over the Internet, or method of electronic storage, is 100 percent secure, however. Therefore, though we strive to use commercially acceptable means to protect your personal information, we cannot guarantee its absolute security.
If we decide to change our e-mail practices, we will post those changes to this privacy statement, the homepage, and other places we think appropriate so that you are aware of what information we collect, how we use it, and under what circumstances, if any, we disclose it.
If we make material changes to our e-mail practices, we will notify you here, by e-mail, and by means of a notice on our home page.
The advertising banners and other forms of advertising appearing on this Web site are sometimes delivered to you, on our behalf, by a third party. In the course of serving advertisements to this site, the third party may place or recognize a unique cookie on your browser. For more information on cookies, you can visit www.cookiecentral.com.
As we continue to develop our business, we might sell certain aspects of our entities or assets. In such transactions, user information, including personally identifiable information, generally is one of the transferred business assets, and by submitting your personal information on Wn.com you agree that your data may be transferred to such parties in these circumstances.