Hepatitis viruses have a high infection level and can cause serious diseases. This serious situation represents a major public health problem worldwide. Lots of vaccines for protecting people from HAV and HBV infection are available, nevertheless, mutation of the viruses may cause risk in the future. The effective vaccine of HCV has not been developed now, and pathophysiology of HCV is also not completely dear. The main obstacle in hepatitis research is lacking of perfect animal models. Tree shrews are classified into the primate and some reports showed that tree shrews can be infected by many human viruses. It became a hotspot in studies on the use of tree shrews as model of hepatitis infection. This review introduces the development as well problems of the use of tree shrews as hepatitis research models, especially in hepatitis A, B and C viruses infection.