One of the most common meanings 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 humans, requiring that travelers cut their way through.[4][5][6] This definition draws a distinction between primary forest and jungle, since the under-storey of tropical forests is typically open of vegetation due to a lack of sunlight, and hence relatively easy to traverse.[7][8] Jungles may exist within, or at the borders of, tropical forests in areas where the forest has been opened through natural disturbance such as hurricanes, or through human activity such as logging.[4][9][10] 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 forest margins and along stream banks, once again due to the greater available light at ground level.Because European explorers initially travelled through tropical forests 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 forest,[6][18] but may extend to cloud forest, temperate rainforest and mangroves[17][19] with no reference to the vegetation structure or the ease of travel.
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