As the severe acute respiratory syndrome-coronavirus-2 (SARS-CoV-2) pandemic continues to spread globally, its genome is undergoing mutations and evolution, giving rise to various strains such as α, β, γ, and δ. Therefore, the continuous development of drugs and vaccines targeting the various strains has become pivotal to addressing the COVID-19 pandemic. Establishing animal models of SARS-CoV-2 enables study of the pathogenesis of the virus and is crucial for evaluating the efficacy of drugs and vaccines against SARS-CoV-2. However, commonly used animal models such as mice exhibit limited susceptibility to wildtype SARS-CoV-2 infection, underscoring the urgent need for animal models that can be infected with the novel coronavirus and better simulate the human pathological and physiological conditions. This review summarizes the animal models used to study SARS-CoV-2 infection and transmission, and their progress in characterizing the viral immunopathology.