Inland taipan strike if provoked, mishandled, or prevented from escaping. Because it lives in such remote locations, the inland taipan seldom comes in contact with people; therefore it is not considered the most deadly snake in the world overall, especially in terms of disposition and human deaths per year. The word "fierce" from its alternative name describes its venom, not its temperament. The two Australian taipans; the coastal taipan ("Oxyuranus scutellatus") and the inland taipan ("Oxyuranus microlepidotus") shared a common ancestor. Alignments of the mitochondrial ND4 genes from these species indicate an evolutionary divergence from the common ancestor around 9-10 million years
Coastal taipan being bitten, but the average is around 2.5 hours. The time between a bite and death depends on various factors such as the nature of the bite and the constitution of the victim. Untreated bites have a mortality rate of 100% as the coastal taipan always delivers a fatal dose of venom (an average bite delivers 10-12x the lethal dose of venom for a human adult male), and medical professionals recommend that victims seek immediate medical attention even for apparently minor bites. Before the introduction of specific antivenom by the Commonwealth Serum Laboratories in 1956, nearly all bites were fatal.