Jungle

Box Log Falls, Lamington National Park, Queensland, Australia

Jungle usually refers to a dense forest in a hot climate, such as a tropical rainforest. About 6% of the Earth's land mass is classified as jungle. Jungles are vital to sustaining the ecosystems of the Earth as we know it. About 40% of all species live in jungle environments [1].

The word jungle originates from a Sanskrit word jangala, meaning "desert". In many languages of the Indian subcontinent, including Indian English, it is generally used to refer to any wild, untended or uncultivated land, including forest, scrub, or desert landscapes. Sometimes an urban environment can be called a jungle, as "concrete jungle".

The term may still be used in a technical context to describe the forest biome rainforest, a forest characterised by extensive biodiversity and densely tangled undergrowth including young trees, vines and lianas, and herbaceous plants. As a forest biome, "jungles" are present in both equatorial and tropical climatic zones, and are associated with preclimax stages of the rainforest. For this reason, jungle is to be 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, 'jungle' is oftentimes found at the edges of climax rain-forests, where human activity may increase sunlight penetration.

Not all regions called "jungles" would qualify as "rain forests" because many would apply "jungle" to the forests of northern Thailand or southern Guangdong in China: but scientifically, these are "monsoon forests" or "tropical deciduous forests" but not "rain forests".

Metaphorical Use

The term "jungle" is frequently used as a metaphor for a lawless situation where the strong may devour the weak with impunity. It is used in connection with situations of the collapse of social order where robbery, rape or murder may be committed with no police to interfere, and also in reference to situations in international relations where strong states are perceived as committing naked aggression against smaller and weaker ones.

Upton Sinclair gave the title The Jungle to his book about the life of workers at the Chicago Stockyards in order to imply that the workers were being mercilessly exploited and had no legal or other recourse.

In a highly controversial statement, Ehud Barak - former Israeli Prime Minster and currently Minster of Defence - compared Israel to "a villa in the jungle". Opponents from the Israeli Peace Now movement accused Barak of in effect comparing Israel's Arab neighbors, specifically the Palestinians, to "beasts or savages, with whom there is no need to communicate, approach, get to know and reconcile with" (see [2]).

The term "The Law of the Jungle" is also used in this kind of context, drawn from Rudyard Kipling's The Jungle Book - 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.

In Hobo lingo, "Jungle" denoted an area off a railroad where hobo camp and congregate, lighting fires at night; a "Jungle Buzzard" referred to a hobo or tramp that preys on their own. The "Hobo Code" adopted in the 1889 National Hobo Convention in St. Louis, Missouri and intended as a concrete set of laws to govern the Nation-wide Hobo Body, included "If in a community jungle [i.e. of the Hobo community] always pitch in and help"

The "Cities in Flight" Science Fiction series by James Blish depicted spaceborne cities flying through the galaxy, which the writer compared to Hobos or Okies of space. The term "jungle", borrowed from the above Hobo term, is used for an area of space where such flying cities congregate.

See also

• Forest
• Rainforest
• The Jungle Book (Kipling)
• The Jungle (Upton Sinclair)
• The Law of the Jungle
• The Phantom

External links

• BBC interactive site
• Link illustrating Biomes

bs:Džungla

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