A jungle is land covered with dense vegetation dominated by trees.

Application of the term has

varied greatly during the last several centuries. Jungles in Western literature can represent a less
civilised or unruly space outside the control of civilisation: attributed to the jungle's association
in colonial discourse with places colonised by Europeans.

Contents
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1Etymology
2Wildlife
3Varying usage
o 3.1As dense and impenetrable vegetation
o 3.2As moist forest
o 3.3As metaphor
4See also
5References
6External links

Etymology[edit]
The word jungle originates from the Sanskrit word jangala (Sanskrit: ), meaning uncultivated
land. Although the Sanskrit word refers to dry land, it has been suggested that an Anglo-Indian
interpretation led to its connotation as a dense "tangled thicket"[1] while others have argued that a
cognate word in Urdu did refer to forests.[2] The term is prevalent in many languages of the Indian
subcontinent, and the Iranian Plateau, where it is commonly used to refer to the plant growth
replacing primeval forest or to the unkempt tropical vegetation that takes over abandoned areas.[3]

Wildlife[edit]
Because jungles occur on all inhabited landmasses and may incorporate numerous vegetation and
land types, the wildlife of jungles can not be defined and consists of the biota of the constitute land
type and region.

Varying usage[edit]
As dense and impenetrable vegetation[edit]

Vine thicket, a typical impenetrable jungle, Australia

One of the most common meanings of jungle is land overgrown with tangled vegetation at ground
level, especially in the tropics. Typically such vegetation is sufficiently dense to hinder movement by
humans, requiring that travelers cut their way through.[4][5][6] This definition draws a distinction
between rainforest and jungle, since the understorey of rainforests is typically open of vegetation
due to a lack of sunlight, and hence relatively easy to traverse.[7][8] Jungles may exist within, or at the
borders of, rainforests in areas where rainforest has been opened through natural disturbance such
as hurricanes, or through human activity such as logging.[4][9][10] The successional vegetation that
springs up following such disturbance of rainforest is dense and impenetrable and is a typical
jungle. Jungle also typically forms along rainforest margins such as stream banks, once again due to
the greater available light at ground level.[7]
Monsoon forests and mangroves are commonly referred to as jungles of this type. Having a more
open canopy than rainforests, monsoon forests typically have dense understoreys with
numerous lianas and shrubs making movement difficult,[4][11][12] while the prop roots and low canopies
of mangroves produce similar difficulties.[13][14]

As moist forest[edit]

Impenetrable jungle lining a river bank in rainforest, Cameroon

Because European explorers initially travelled through tropical rainforests largely by river, the dense
tangled vegetation lining the stream banks gave a misleading impression that such jungle conditions
existed throughout the entire forest. As a result, it was wrongly assumed that the entire forest was
impenetrable jungle.[15][16] This in turn appears to have given rise to the second popular usage of
jungle as virtually any humid tropical forest.[17] Jungle in this context is particularly associated
with tropical rainforest,[6][18] but may extend to cloud forest, temperate rainforest and
mangroves[17][19] with no reference to the vegetation structure or the ease of travel.
The word "Rainforest" has largely replaced "Jungle" as the descriptor of humid tropical forests, a
linguistic transition that has occurred since the 1970s. "Rainforest" itself did not appear in English
dictionaries prior to the 1970s.[20] The word "jungle" accounted for over 80% of the terms used to
refer to tropical forests in print media prior to the 1970s, since when it has been steadily replaced by
"rainforest", [21] although "jungle" still remains in common use when referring to tropical rainforests.[20]

As metaphor[edit]
Use of the jungle to represent savageness and ferocity in popular culture.

As a metaphor, jungle often refers to situations that are unruly or lawless, or where the only law is
perceived to be "survival of the fittest". This reflects the view of "city people" that forests are such
places. Upton Sinclair gave the title The Jungle (1906) to his famous book about the life of workers
at the Chicago Stockyards portraying the workers as being mercilessly exploited with no legal or
other lawful recourse.[22]
The term "The Law of the Jungle" is also used in a similar context, drawn from Rudyard Kipling's The
Jungle Book (1894) though in the society of jungle animals portrayed in that book and obviously
meant as a metaphor for human society, that phrase referred to an intricate code of laws which
Kipling describes in detail, and not at all to a lawless chaos.
The word "jungle" itself carries connotations of untamed and uncontrollable nature and isolation from
civilisation, along with the emotions that evokes: threat, confusion, powerlessness, disorientation
and immobilisation.[21][23][24] The change from "jungle" to "rainforest" as the preferred term for
describing tropical forests as has been a response to an increasing perception of these forests as
fragile and spiritual places, a viewpoint not in keeping with the darker connotations of "jungle".[21][25][26]
Cultural scholars, especially post-colonial critics, often analyse the jungle within the concept of
hierarchical domination and the demand western cultures often places on other cultures to conform
to their standards of civilisation. For example: Edward Said notes that the Tarzan depicted
by Johnny Weissmuller was a resident of the jungle representing the savage, untamed and wild, yet
still a white master of it;[27] and in his essay "An Image of Africa" about Heart of Darkness African
novelist and theorist Chinua Achebe notes how the jungle and Africa become the source of
temptation for white European characters like Marlowe and Kurtz.[28]
Former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak compared Israel to "a villa in the jungle" - a comparison
which had been often quoted in Israeli political debates. Barak's critics on the left side of Israeli
politics strongly criticised the comparison. For example, Uri Avnery charged that comparing
"civilised" Israel with "a villa" and Israel's Arab neighbors with the "wild beasts" of the "jungle" tends
to throw the blame for the absence of peace on the "wild" Arab and Palestinian side, and absolve
Israel of responsibility.[29][30][31]