Abstract Heavy metal pollution resulted in soil biodiversity loss, soil quality degeneration and heavy metal transfer, even threatened human health. How to find and control pollution in time got more and more attention. The information of the main soil animals species was closely related to soil ecosystem in all aspects, which was often used as a significant biological index to evaluate soil quality. This article summarized the influence of heavy metal toxicity to soil animals community structure, activity, food searching, reproduction, physiological toxicity and so on.