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Refuge use by animals provides greater safety from predation. Individual killifish were attacked in an open laboratory habitat (containing food) by either a trout predator model or a control model that did not resemble a trout. Animals may reduce their individual risk of predation by entering refuges wherein they are less susceptible to predation than in open habitat. Studies have shown that food-deprived or energy-limited animals are generally more willing to incur greater risks to obtain food than are well-fed animals. The results of this study showed that under a potential predation threat, refuge use in the banded killifish depended on individual body size but not on current nutritional state (at least not with the hunger manipulations used here), nor on the apparent level of predation threat.