We adopted a bibliometrical approach to evaluate the status of animal behavior research in China. We used the terms “animal behavior” and “ethology” as keywords to search and collect Chinese and English literature in animal behavior studies by Chinese researchers in the Science Citation Index and the China Academic Journal Network Publishing database. We performed quantitative analyses on the distributions of the years of publication, the author and authors’ affiliations, the journals, the research funds, times cited, study animals, the countries of the collaborators, research area, and fund types. The results indicated that animal behavior studies started late in China and that the growth of publications fluctuated in the past three decades. There has been a trend toward English-language and away from Chinese-language in recent years. The average number of citations per paper was 2.81. The distribution of organizations and researchers engaged in the field of animal behavior were scattered, but there were core research groups formed in China. Both Chinese and English publications were concentrated in several journals and a professional journal aimed at animal behavior was needed in China. Research funds had a wide array of sources with the National Natural Science Foundation of China as the main funding source. The percentage of publications which contained international collaborators in English was much more than that in Chinese. The main collaborating country was USA. Mammals were the most important focal animal, followed by birds in Chinese publications but insects in English publications. Reproductive behavior was a major field of study, and more research on activity rhythms, time budgets, observation recordings, and behavior echograms were reported in Chinese than in English. In general, the development of animal behavior publications in China followed a logistic growth pattern. Though the overall level of the research is still lower, we expect that animal behavior study has stepped into a new stage of development.