Inland taipan lying on the ground and convulsing. He was flown in a serious condition to Essendon Airport and driven to the Royal Melbourne Hospital, where his condition was stabilised and over time he recovered. Luckily only a tiny amount of venom from the inland taipan had entered his body, and the adverse reaction he felt shortly after was an allergic one, presumably due to his past snake bites. According to Rob Bredl, a.k.a. "The Barefoot Bushman", in an isolated area of South Australia his father, Joe Bredl, was bitten while catching an inland taipan and barely survived. A more recent victim
Coastal taipan is exceeded in length among venomous snakes only by the Asiatic king cobra, African black mamba, and genus "Lachesis" (bushmasters) of the American neotropics. The head of the coastal taipan is long and narrow like that of the African black mamba ("Dendroaspis polylepis"), but without the "coffin" shape. The two species are strongly convergent in several aspects of morphology, ecology and behaviour. "O. scutellatus" has an angular brow and is lighter-coloured on the face. The body is slender and colouration can vary. It is often uniformly light olive or reddish-brown in colour, but some specimens may be dark gray to