According to the World Health Organization，major depression disorder is projected to reach second place as leading contributor to the global burden of disease by the year 2020． Despite the emergency need for better therapies of depression，and major advances in the understanding of the molecular basis of this disorder in recent years，efforts to discover and develop new drugs for major depression disorder ，especially those which might revolutionize disease treatment，have been relatively unsuccessful． An important reason for this is that it is exceedingly difficult to build an animal model that perfectly recapitulates the symptoms of depression in human patients． In order to enhance clinical validity of animal models of depression，we reviewed the recent animal models of depression and discussed its translational research here．