Résumé
Browsers eat plant leaves to survive. Plants need their leaves to survive. Both of these reigns have develop capacities to improve their survival chances. Plants protect their leaves by making them less tasty or accessible. Animals are able to adapt to plant poisons or structural protections. Focusing on mammalian browsers and woody plants, the ability of the animal to easily move from a part of the plant to another, the size of the bites, the sensitivity to woody or spiny obstacles and thus the potential protection of the branching structure of the plant are research topics that are raised. Anyway, from a mechanistic point of view, the way large mammalian herbivores impact woody plants remain poorly understood compared to other drivers such as drought, soil fertility, frost, fire, etc, and even compared to our understanding of herbaceous herbivory. Investigations of the role and importance of these factors are impaired by the fact that field observations and experiments are difficult, if possible at all.