In nature animals going about their daily routine need to avoid predators in order to survive. Many animals have evolved some kindof startle response, which enables them to escape from dangerous situations. As robots are requiredto operate in more hostile environments, mechanisms analogous to startle responses may be critical to building robust systems. This paper presents some preliminary work exploring (1) how some reactive evasive behaviours can be added to an agent operating in a hostile environment, and(2) how evasive measures can be integratedwith the agent’s other activities.