The Lower Yangtze Valley is one of the key regions to explore social complexity and the origins and development of Chinese civilization. Also, the interaction between the increasing social complexity and the regional subsistence economy also brings in a critical issue in archaeology. Shanghai plays an important part in the archaeological cultural sequence of the Lower Yangtze Valley, the zooarchaeology of which will cast light on human-land relationships, subsistence changes and social shifts in past societies. This paper reviews the zooarchaeological studies conducted at pre-Qin sites in Shanghai. There are seven archaeological sites the zooarchaeological results of which have been published, namely the sites of Songze, Fuquanshan, Wujiachang, Yaojiaquan, Jianghai, Maqiao and Guangfulin. Although these sites were excavated at different times and the faunal databases had been open to the public to various degrees, we re-analyzed the faunal data of each site respectively and, based on them, unveiled several characteristics regarding animal procurement and exploitation strategies in Shanghai from the Neolithic Age to pre-Qin periods. First, the strategy of animal procurement and exploitation in pre-Qin Shanghai was the result of environmental adaptation. Archaeological sites of the pre-Qin periods were located closer to the coastline than in modern days. It is central to understanding how ancient residents in Shanghai had adapted to the surrounding environment and exploited the local resources. Employing “site catchment analysis,” the surrounding environments which were exploited by ancient residents in Shanghai are categorized into six groups:woods, bushes, wetlands, freshwater bodies, saltwater bodies and human settlements. Animals, such as deer, living in the woods and bushes were most frequently exploited. Highly diverse animal resources were available in wetlands. The hypothesis of the rice-fish farming system in wet paddy fields was partially supported by discoveries of fish and reptile taxa adapted to paddy fields and phytolith results from Songze and Maqiao. The exploitation of wetlands corresponded to the subsistence economy centred around the wetland system in the Lower Yangtze Valley. Marine resources were available at sites near the coastal line. However, there have been scarce discoveries of marine fish bones in Shanghai, likely due to the limited employment of sieving and floating during the excavations. Low-level livestock husbandry was practised at human settlements. It is evident that pigs and dogs were domesticated. Nevertheless, it remains unclear whether the buffalo bones recovered from the Songze, Yaojiaquan, Guangfulin and Maqiao sites belong to domesticated or wild species. Multidisciplinary studies integrating geometric morphometrics, stable isotopic analysis and aDNA analysis will help clarify the domestication story of the local taxon. Second, animal procurement and exploitation in Shanghai were consistent with the general subsistence pattern in the Lower Yangtze Valley during the pre-Qin periods. From a regional perspective, subsistence in the Lower Yangtze Valley displays a changing pattern varying in the proportion of wild animal reliance versus livestock husbandry. The Liangzhue and Maqiao cultures, both found in Shanghai, are two turning points in this process. During the Songze cultural period, residents in Shanghai mainly relied on wild mammals for meat. Meanwhile, domesticated pigs and dogs were kept at a relatively lower level. The reliance on wild animals along with limited utilization of domesticated animals was extended into the Liangzhu cultural period in Shanghai. This result largely fits in the regional mosaic pattern in the Lower Yangtze Valley where agriculture and livestock husbandry were intensified in the political centre around the Liangzhu ancient city and hunting and fishing remained the major lifeway in peripheral regions including Shanghai. Later in the Maqiao cultural period, the hunting and fishing tradition in the subsistence economy continued, being unlikely to be influenced by the collapse of Liangzhu. It is worth noting that during the Maqiao period, the targeted prey species shifted from deer to wild boar. This dietary preference for pork might have formed together with the development of pig husbandry and been retained in the hunting and fishing lifestyle thereafter. To sum up, the archaeological sites in Shanghai during the pre-Qin periods were very likely to be small self-sufficient villages relying mainly on wild animal resources and supplemented by low-level livestock husbandry. Ancient residents in Shanghai took advantage of the local environment and exploited surrounding natural resources. Looking forward to future research, we hope that new archaeological data from recent excavations could be published in time, zooarchaeological studies from neighboring regions could be further strengthened, and multidisciplinary studies encouraged. By doing so, we aim to move towards a more comprehensive, in-depth and detailed understanding of the subsistence in ancient Shanghai against the regional economic and ecological background in the Lower Yangtze Valley.