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For other uses, see Jungle (disambiguation).
Jungle in Indonesia.

A jungle is land covered with dense vegetation, with the precise definition of the word varying considerably.

Varying usage

Jungle as dense and impenetrable vegetation

Vine thicket, a typical impenetrable jungle

One of the most common meaning 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 people, requiring that travellers cut their way through.[1][2][3] 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.[4][5] Jungles may exist within, or at the borders of, rainforest in areas where rainforest has been opened through natural disturbance such as hurricanes, through human activity such as logging.[6][7][8] 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.[9]

Monsoon forests and mangroves are also 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,[10][11][12] while the prop roots and low canopies of mangroves produce similar difficulties.[13][14]

Jungle as moist forest

Impenetrable jungle lining a river bank in rainforest

Because European explorers initially traveled 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,[18][19] but may extend to cloud forest, temperate rainforest and mangroves[20][21] 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.[22] 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",[23] although "jungle" still remains in common use when referring to tropical rainforests.[24]

Jungle as metaphor

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.[25]

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.[26][27][28] 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".[29][30][31]

Etymology

The word jungle originates from the Sanskrit word jangala (Sanskrit: जंगल), 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".[32] while others have argued that a cognate word in Urdu did refer to forests.[33] The term is prevalent in many languages of the Indian subcontinent, and Iranian plateau, particularly in Hindi and Persian.[34]

References

  1. ^ http://www4.uwsp.edu/geo/faculty/ritter/geog101/textbook/biomes/biomes_tropical_forests_page_1.html
  2. ^ http://library.thinkquest.org/26634/forest/introf.htm
  3. ^ Nygren, A. 2006 Representations of Tropical Forests and Tropical Forest-Dwellers in Travel Accounts of ‘National Geographic', Environmental Values 15
  4. ^ http://www.oneonta.edu/faculty/baumanpr/geosat2/Central%20Africa%20I/Central%20Africa%20Part%20I.htm
  5. ^ www.blueplanetbiomes.org/rainforest.htm
  6. ^ Kricher JC. 1997. A neotropical companion: an introduction to the animals, plants, and ecosystems of the New World tropics, 2nd edn. New Jersey: Princeton University Press.
  7. ^ http://www4.uwsp.edu/geo/faculty/ritter/geog101/textbook/biomes/biomes_tropical_forests_page_1.html
  8. ^ http://www.utm.edu/departments/cece/ecology/L4.shtml
  9. ^ http://www.oneonta.edu/faculty/baumanpr/geosat2/Central%20Africa%20I/Central%20Africa%20Part%20I.htm
  10. ^ http://www4.uwsp.edu/geo/faculty/ritter/geog101/textbook/biomes/biomes_tropical_forests_page_1.html
  11. ^ www.u.arizona.edu/~jrjurjev/Geo101_files/Forest_Biome[1][1].ppt
  12. ^ http://geoggeol.wku.edu/jall/classes/geog328/pdfs/Land%20Biomes.pdf
  13. ^ Holguin, G. Guzman, M.A. &Bashan, Y. 1992 Two new nitrogen-fixing bacteria from the rhizosphere of mangrove trees: Their isolation, identification and in vitro interaction with rhizosphere Staphylococcus sp. FEMS Microbiology Ecology 101
  14. ^ Namdar, A. & Nusrath, A. 2010 Tsunami numerical modeling and mitigation. Frattura ed Integrità Strutturale 12
  15. ^ Sterling, T. 1983 The Amazon: The World's Wild Places. Time-Life Books. New York
  16. ^ http://www.oneonta.edu/faculty/baumanpr/geosat2/Central%20Africa%20I/Central%20Africa%20Part%20I.htm.
  17. ^ Purser, B. 2003. Jungle bugs: masters of camouflage and mimicry. Firefly Books, Toronto.
  18. ^ Birtles, T.G. 1997: First contact: colonial E u ropean preconceptions of tro p i c a l Queensland rainforest and its people. Journal of Historical Geography 23, 393–417.
  19. ^ Nygren, A. 2006 Representations of Tropical Forests and Tropical Forest-Dwellers in Travel Accounts of ‘National Geographic', Environmental Values 15
  20. ^ Purser, B. 2003. Jungle bugs: masters of camouflage and mimicry. Firefly Books, Toronto.
  21. ^ M\Iyengar, M. O. T. 1930 Jungle in Relation to Malaria in Bengal. Indian Journal of Medical Research 18:1
  22. ^ Rogers, C. 2012 "Jungle Fever: Exploring Madness and Medicine in Twentieth-Century Tropical Narratives". Vanderbilt University Press, Nashville
  23. ^ Slater, C (2003). In Search of the Rain Forest. Duke University Press
  24. ^ Rogers, C. 2012 "Jungle Fever: Exploring Madness and Medicine in Twentieth-Century Tropical Narratives". Vanderbilt University Press, Nashville
  25. ^ 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 0-521-37553-3.
  26. ^ Fearing, F. (1963) "The problem of metaphor" Southern Journal of Communication
  27. ^ Slater, C (2003). In Search of the Rain Forest. Duke University Press
  28. ^ Jones, J. (1962) "The Thin Red Line". Dell Publishing New York
  29. ^ Slater, C (2003). In Search of the Rain Forest. Duke University Press
  30. ^ Slater, C (2004). Marketing the ‘rain forest’: Raw Vanilla fragrance and the ongoing transformation of the jungle. Cultural Geographies 11:4
  31. ^ Gustavson, E. 2007 "Rhetoric: How Politicians Manipulate Language and the Media to Shape Public Thought" Hinckley Journal Of Politics 8
  32. ^ Francis Zimmermann (1999). The jungle and the aroma of meats: an ecological theme in Hindu medicine. Volume 4. Motilal Banarsidass. ISBN 81-208-1618-8.
  33. ^ Dove, Michael R. (1992). "The Dialectical History of "Jungle" in Pakistan: An Examination of the Relationship between Nature and Culture". Journal of Anthropological Research. 48 (3): 231–253.
  34. ^ Yule, Henry, Sir (1903). 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. J. Murray, London.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
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