A jungle is land covered with dense vegetation dominated by trees. Application of the term has varied greatly during the past recent centuries. Before the 1970s, tropical rainforests were generally referred to as jungles but this terminology has fallen out of usage.[citation needed] 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.
Etymology
The word jungle originates from the Sanskrit word Jangla (Sanskrit: जङ्गल), 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.
Wildlife
Because jungles occur on all inhabited landmasses and may incorporate numerous vegetation and land types in different climatic zones, the wildlife of jungles can not be straightforwardly defined.