While it is true that most living things have irregular and above all rounded shapes and are full of curves, there are obvious obvious exceptions.

One of these is certainly represented by Haloquadratum, a bacterium belonging to the class of Halobacteria, which includes genus of Archaea between them genetically similar and all characterized by the fact that they live in a habitat with very high salt concentration, such as the Dead Sea or the Great Salt Lake in Utah.

As the name itself clearly says, Haloquadratum has a curious square shape that closely resembles the logo of a famous computer company. To discover the existence for the first time inside the Gavish Sabkha, an underwater lake off the Sinai peninsula, was in 1980 the researcher A. E. Walsby.

The cells contain granules of polyhydroxyalkanoates and large amounts of vacuoles filled with gas that allow them to float in water, thus allowing the body to receive as much sunlight as possible. Cells in some circumstances can join together, forming fragile layers up to 40 micrometres in size.