Artificial Intelligence (AI)-based models have shown promising results in the identification of animals’ breeds. The surge in the development of new models has opened up new avenues for computer vision. The growing need to achieve cent percent accuracy in the prediction, identification and classification of data/images has motivated researchers to develop innovative strategies seamlessly. The results of various AI models are analyzed in terms of their classification accuracy. EfficientNet-B0 provided an accuracy of 95% in cat breed identification. InceptionV3 deep learning model reached the maximum accuracy of 96.75%, 96.57%, and 100% on dog, goat, and pig breed identification, respectively. ResNet attained an accuracy of 85.77% on snake species identification. This article provides an in-depth analysis of animal classification/species identification models. The inferences drawn out of this literature review would help the researchers in the selection of an ideal AI model to develop an automated animal classification model.