Ingestive behaviour determines the nutrient intake and thus feed efficiency and robustness of ruminants through their ability to adapt to diverse available resources. Grazing behavior of ruminant has been intensively researched, but it is still difficult to get a clear picture of the various relationships linking bite mass to daily intake. To address this issue, we led a metaanalysis (103 publications, 278 experiments) to shed light on the quantitative adaptive feeding behaviour responses of cattle (C) and small ruminants (SR) facing variations in sward characteristics, notably sward height (SH, 18. 7 +/- 13.9 cm) and herbage bulk density (HBD, 1.73 +/- 1.30 kg DM/m(3)). All responses plotted as a plateau expressing an adaptive limit with extreme SH and HBD values. The minimum plateau for bite rate (BR, 46.9 +/- 14.6/min) was around 40/min, while intake rate (IR) values, different for C and SR, i.e. 69.1 +/- 38.1 vs. 99.9 +/- 45.7 mg DM/kg Body Weight (BW) per min respectively ranged between a minimum plateau of 50 mg DM//kg BW/min and a maximum plateau around 100 mg DM/kg BW/min. Two other pasture management factors affected IR: herbage allowance (10.16 +/- 6.0, DM % BW) and daily proportion of time spent grazing (0.30 +/- 0.08). Our results confirm the specific key influence of bite mass (BM, 1.80 +/- 1.27 mg DM/kg BW) on IR. The regressions were IR = 145 (1-exp (-b BM)), where b was 0.44 for C vs. 0.54 for SR. This meta-analysis also revealed fundamental differences in behaviour between C and SR that no study to date has attempted to compare. SR have to chew more (2.7 +/- 1.2 vs. 1.6 +/- 0.5 JM/bite) to ingest the same amount of DM per bite (expressed in relation to BW) as C, which allows them to ingest slightly quicker.