Jungles

A Jungle (Sanskrit: जंगल) is an area of land in the tropics overgrown with dense vegetation. The undergrowth in a rainforest is restricted in many areas by the poor penetration of sunlight to ground level. If the leaf canopy is destroyed or thinned, the ground beneath is soon colonized by a dense, tangled growth of vines, shrubs and small trees; this is called a jungle. There are two types of rainforest, tropical rainforest and temperate rainforest. About 10% 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 known terrestrial species live in jungle environments. In common usage, forests of northern Thailand or southern Guangdong in China would qualify as tropical rainforest, but scientifically, these are "monsoon forests" or "tropical deciduous forests" but not rain forests.