Jump to content

Jungle: Difference between revisions

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Content deleted Content added
m Reverted edits by 65.79.16.78 to last revision by Falcon8765 (HG)
No edit summary
Tag: references removed
Line 1: Line 1:
Jungledooore come to my jungle! Guru dev, hey jngle!
{{Otheruses}}
[[Image:Dry rainforest.jpg|250px|thumb|right|Vine thicket, a typical jungle]]
'''Jungle''' ({{lang-sa| जंगल}}) refers to the most dense, more or less impenetrable regions within a [[tropical rainforest]] with an abundance of animal and plant life. The word ''jungle'' originates from the [[Sanskrit]] word ''jangala'' (जंगल) which referred to ''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".<ref>{{cite book|title=The jungle and the aroma of meats: an ecological theme in Hindu medicine. Volume 4 |author=Francis Zimmermann| publisher=Motilal Banarsidass |year=1999| isbn= 8120816188}}</ref> while others have argued that a cognate word in Urdu did refer to forests.<ref>{{cite journal|title=The Dialectical History of "Jungle" in Pakistan: An Examination of the Relationship between Nature and Culture| author=Dove, Michael R. |journal=Journal of Anthropological Research |volume=48| issue= 3 |year=1992 |pages= 231–253}}</ref> The term is prevalent in many languages of the Indian subcontinent, and Iranian plateau, particularly in Hindi and Persian.<ref>{{cite book|author=Yule, Henry, Sir|title= Hobson-Jobson: A glossary of colloquial Anglo-Indian words and phrases, and of kindred terms, etymological, historical, geographical and discursive. New ed. edited by William Crooke, B.A. |publisher=J. Murray, London|year=1903| url=http://dsal.uchicago.edu/cgi-bin/philologic/getobject.pl?c.1:1:274.hobson}}</ref>

The term ''jungle'' may still be used in technical contexts{{Citation needed|date=December 2009}} to describe the [[rainforest]] [[biome]], a forest characterised by extensive [[biodiversity]] and densely tangled undergrowth including the young [[tree]]s, [[vine]]s and [[liana]]s, and [[herbaceous]] plants.


== Biome ==
== Biome ==

Revision as of 17:02, 9 April 2010

Jungledooore come to my jungle! Guru dev, hey jngle!

Biome

Jungle on Pulau Tioman, Malaysia

About 6% of the Earth's land mass consists of the ecosystems that could qualify as jungle under the common usage of the word. 57% of all species live in jungle environments.[1] In common usage, forests of northern Thailand or southern Guangdong in China would qualify, but scientifically, these are "monsoon forests" or "tropical deciduous forests" but not "rain forests".[citation needed]

As a forest biome, jungles are present in both equatorial and tropical climatic zones, and are associated with preclimax stages of the rainforest. In another technical context, jungle is distinguished from tropical rainforest in that the former is a profuse thicket of tropical shrubs, vines, and small trees growing in areas outside the light-blocking canopy of a tropical rainforest. Hence, jungles are often found at the edges of climax rain-forests, where human activity may increase sunlight penetration.[citation needed]

As metaphor

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.[2]

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.

References

  1. ^ http://www.bbc.co.uk/nature/programmes/tv/jungle/
  2. ^ Miller, David Cameron (1989). Dark Eden: the swamp in nineteenth-century American culture. Volume 43 of Cambridge studies in American literature and culture Structural Analysis in the Social Sciences. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0521375533.