It's a familiar horror movie trope: a lost traveler stumbles upon the foreboding lair of a mad scientist and, in time, discovers that locked away in some laboratory are experiments that qualify as crimes against nature. On the sunnier side of that street is the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). Located next to a rainbow-festooned mall in suburban Arlington, Virginia, the government agency has been funding new species of bio-inspired robotic creatures.

This cruelty-free island of Doctor Moreau is focused on taking the best of what evolution has to offer and turning it into a mechanical military solution. DARPA doesn't do the work itself but, rather, funds it, leaving the details to companies like Boston Dynamics and academic institutions, such as MIT. DARPA's self-stated mission is "to maintain the technological superiority of the U.S. military and prevent technological surprise from harming our national security by sponsoring revolutionary, high-payoff research bridging the gap between fundamental discoveries and their military use."

In keeping with this element of technological surprise, one thing DARPA has in common with shadowier pseudo-scientists is the compulsion for secrecy. Exactly what these zoological wonders will be up to is rarely disclosed, but what they can do is often nothing short of amazing.

Animals already have a considerable physical advantage over us and when their potential is stripped down to its raw power and enhanced by technology, the tasks we can achieve with it are that much greater. Without endangering humans or animals, in battle and other dangerous situations, these robo-animals can trek over rocky and muddy terrain, scale buildings in a leap, and perform surveillance and reconnaissance in treacherous territory.

Take a virtual DARPA safari with this slideshow of wild things. And, please, keep your hands inside the vehicle at all times; you never know what's going to leap, run, or hop out.