Smooth Scales and a Coffin-Shaped Head: teacher key

Black Mambas, grade 6 edition, written for 6th grade. A close look at the black mamba: its body, colours and name, where it lives, how fast it has been reported to slither, how it moves, how its day runs, what it eats, its venom and family, its conservation status, and how it breeds.

Read the book. Print this page for the key.

Questions and answers

1. What shape is a black mamba's head?
   • Coffin-shaped (answer)
   • Round
   • Flat like a plate
2. What colour is a black mamba's belly?
   • Bright red
   • Cream to pale grey-green (answer)
   • Jet black
3. About how fast has a black mamba been reported slithering, at most?
   • About 90 kilometres an hour
   • About 2 kilometres an hour
   • About 20 kilometres an hour (answer)
4. When is a black mamba active?
   • A few hours after sunrise until about an hour before dusk (answer)
   • Only at midnight
   • Only in winter
5. Why might clutch sizes be written as two ranges?
   • A mamba lays one egg
   • Accounts give different sizes (answer)
   • Nobody has seen eggs
6. What does refuge mean in: it returns to its refuge?
   • A loud noise
   • A kind of food
   • A safe place to rest (answer)

Words

• polylepis: many scales
• refuge: safe place
• dassies: small mammals
• neurotoxic: harming nerves
• Elapidae: snake family
• clutch: eggs together