Hi, I'm Mini-Chester and just finished 4th grade. I was studying the inland taipan snake for my animal project and decided to make a geocache at Scorpion Canyon about it. Below is the essay I wrote for this project. Brand new Travel Bug for the FTF. It's destiantion is the floodplains of Australia.
P.S. Dont tell my dad I wrote this about the cache hint: don't pull from the front push from the back.
Venom. One of the deadliest weapons in the world. The Inland Taipan, or Oxyuranus Microlepidotus, (its scientific name), holds the strongest venom that was ever to be used by a snake. Male Inland Taipans get up to 6 feet and females get up to 8 feet. These huge snakes only eat small rodents, but one bite from them holds enough venom to kill 100 people! If you go looking for an Inland Taipan, look for a black and yellow zig zag body with a dark blue head. They only come out in the morning but if it's too hot the snake will hunt at night like most snakes do. The burning ground of the flood plains rumbles as the Inland Taipan comes out to hunt, all animals flee in his appearance.
The hot cracking loans of the floodplains in Australia are where the Inland Taipans live. Inland Taipans have 3 predators, the mulga snake, Perentie, and the king brown snake. The Mulga snake is a highly toxic snake that is immune to the Inland Taipans venom, which makes it a powerful predator. The Perentie is one of the biggest monitor lizards in the world, getting up to 7 feet in length. These lizards like to feed on baby Taipans. King Brown snakes get up to 8 feet 2 inches and like to feed on the young just like the mulga snake and the Perentie do. The sun is rising and it's the Inland Taipans turn to hunt.
When the Inland Taipan is hunting they try to have a low profile. First they circle their prey while arching its back and getting ready to strike. Eventually, their prey steps out of its burrow, the taipan is ready. In an instant the mouse is dead thanks to the Inland Taipan's rapid attack power and of course the venom. The floodplains are huge and stretch so far that they touch the gibber plains. The shrubs and the cracking clay ground provide a safe place to hide when a mulga snake, Perentie, and king brown snake is hunting. The rocky outcrops and dunes are what animals have to run over to escape the deadly Inland Taipan.If the Inland Taipan and the rest of the taipans went extinct and their predators had to feed what would happen?
If the Inland Taipan was not alive what would happen? Will there be a rodent outbreak? The answer is yes,Inland Taipans eat mice to keep the population down a notch and of course to stay alive. Normally if someone sees an Inland Taipan or any snake they will scream SNAKE! And hit it with a stick or run away like a big baby. Inland Taipans don’t like to interfere with humans and their work, but sometimes humans interfere with the floodplains too much, and that leads to a hospital visit. Humans have ruined and destroyed ecosystems which causes animals to eat different things and live in different places which destroys more ecosystems. If the Inland Taipan was not around the floodplains would be crawling with mice and rats,so these snakes are very important to the environment and so are all animals. Inland taipans are not scary even if you know they have venom, they are just another animal trying to stay alive so who knows what challenges await them.
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