#nature #wild #picinnature #wildbeauty

___JAPANESE KOSHU GRAPES, TRANSLUCENT AND BRIGHT___ The beautiful Koshu grapes, a rare **** anese strain that has become famous in recent years but is actually very old. The first crops date back more than 1,000 years and are believed to be the result of a cross between Vitis vinifera and Vitis Davidii, a wild Asian vine. Their history is intertwined with that of the province of Yamanashi, located in the shadow of Mount Fuji, where they find their ideal homeland. Thanks to this cultivation, the area has prosperous tourist flows that come to see these strange grapes. Furthermore, the cultivation of this grape allowed a really interesting development of an economy based on wine and completely foreign to the Rising Sun archipelago.

When sperm whales need a nap, they take a deep breath, dive down about 45 feet and arrange themselves into perfectly-level, vertical patterns. They sleep sound and still for up to two hours at a time between breaths, in pods of 5 or 6 whales, presumably for protection. No one knew whales slept vertically until a 2008 study documented the behavior. And no one captured really good photography of it in the wild until 2017. French photographer Stephane Granzotto was documenting sperm whales in the Mediterranean for his book on the creatures when he came across these sleeping whales.