Reptile & Amphibian Forums

Just wondering if anyone on here is familiar with the husbandry of this species...not that i'm thinking of keeping one myself at the moment (hahaha), but I'm curious because i see lots of people keeping other Oxyuranus sp. but very few if any seem to keep O. microlepidus...i know that australia bans the export of many species, but aren't there any captive breeding projects on this sp. in the u.s. for collectors to aquire? Or is it just the fact that this snake is 50 times more potent than Naja naja that keeps people from aquiring one? Any input would be appreciated...

The very few taipans you do see in america are almost invariably Papaun taipans. Australia has a tight hold on its reptile inhabitants.

I think Scott Eipper's got them, I know he has one or two Coastals.
Lots of people here in Australia have them and they are easy to keep in terms of being robust, grow like weeds and breed like, er, well Taipans.
Me - I haven't kept them, but bump into them all the time at other collections including that of Freddo Rossignolli up the street. He doesn't post on KS due to past spam wars, so the best contact here is probably Scott Eipper at:
scott_eipper@hotmail.com
In terms of breeding Coastal Taipans - there is a good paper at:

http://www.smuggled.com/BriBar17.htm
and inlands breeding seems to be much the same.

thanks for replying, i didn't think there were many inland's in the U.S., except maybe in zoos...You would guess that SOMEONE had gotten their hands on a pair and tried to breed them in captivity...oh well, guess we're stuck with our beloved African/Asian elapids...

It's very difficult to find anything other than O. s. canni here in the US. And even they are at best, few and far between. So far, the only zoo I've been to that has even had a canni was the St. Louis zoo, and that specimen was obviously not a very LTC as it still had much scarring and such. Importers occasionally bring in the PNG species...taipans, brownsnakes, and blacksnakes, but these rarely do very well for obvious reasons. I recently acquired a pair of cbb canni that were produced this year by Robbie at Crocafeller. It cost me a lot to go the cbb route, but after having a gorgeous w.c. male die on me out of the blue, I decided against messing with any more w.c. PNG stuff. As far as the mainland taipans, I know there are some people in Europe that have both mainland coastals and inlands, however, evidently some of them got them in a slightly less than "legal" manner, so you won't see any coming over here any time soon. I do know of a person here in the US that has a contact in Germany I believe that might be able to get 1.1 of each brought over, but that's all just speculation. I guess we can only sit back, wait, and hope. Oh, there are a very small number of zoos that have mainland taipans. I've heard that a zoo in CA used to have one, and a smaller private zoo in SD has coastals, though I'm not sure about inlands. Anyway, if a successful private breeding of either species is ever accomplished, I'm sure the news will travel quickly and we'll all know about it soon. Until then though, the vast majority of us can only sit back and wait.

By the way, if the guy that works at that private zoo in SD happens to read this (I think he peruses the forums), have you bred those coastals yet? If so, were all the offspring given out to other zoos, or what became of them? If you don't want to say publically then just click my name up there and reply that way.
-Chance

I am in Frankfurt Germany right now, and I will be here until the 14 of Dec. I'm staying at the NT Hotel Frankfurt-Morfelden. I am looking for any Mainland Coastals or Inland Taipans. If you can give me any info about who I can get in contact with here in Germany, please email me at jgwizz@earthlink.net or you can leave a message on my website at www.kingreptiles.com

Regards,

Joe G

The Omaha (Nebraska) zoo has a Taipan in it's desert bio-dome exhibit. Going from memory...I think it was a costal...check out thier website I'm sure they'll have the specifics if you are interested.