Allergic asthma is an important disease. The interflow of asthma between animal models and human is that the former is also established on type I hypersensitivity. Sensitization is the first step for animal models of asthma. The characteristics and reactivity of complete allergens and haptens may lead to different outcomes. Airway challenge is a useful tool to study asthmatic responses. The new methods enabled successful observation of early-phase and late-phase asthmatic responses. Work on the pathogenesis and therapy of asthma should be conducted with different models besides the one of airway hyperresponsiveness used popularly nowadays. Other applications using animal models including airway remodeling, gene knock-out, transgenesis and therapeutic drugs were also reviewed briefly. 