No animal’s blood is safely transfused into humans in routine medical practice today, and doing so would be extremely dangerous.

Can any animal blood be used in humans?

  • Direct transfusion of animal blood into humans (called xenotransfusion) is not clinically accepted because it triggers severe immune reactions, massive red blood cell destruction, and risk of deadly clotting or shock.
  • Historical experiments in the 1600s using sheep, calf, and lamb blood caused serious complications; some patients survived briefly but others had acute hemolysis and death, leading to bans on the practice.

Why animal blood is incompatible

  • Human blood cells carry specific antigens (ABO, Rh and many others); animal red cells have very different antigens, so the human immune system attacks them rapidly.
  • This attack can cause hemolysis (bursting of red cells), black or dark urine, kidney damage, low blood pressure, and organ failure, even after a single transfusion.

What about pigs or other “close” species?

  • Pigs are studied as the most promising animal donors because some of their blood group systems resemble human ABO, and genetically engineered pigs can be made more compatible.
  • However, this work is still experimental: it involves heavy genetic modification and strict infection control, and it is not something used as a standard transfusion option for human patients.

Non‑mammal alternatives: special oxygen carriers

  • Researchers are exploring molecules from non-mammal sources, such as hemoglobin from marine lugworms, which can act as an oxygen carrier without the same blood-type antigens.
  • Early studies suggest these products might help preserve organs or support oxygen delivery, but they are not the same as directly transfusing animal “blood,” and they remain specialized and limited.

Bottom line: what is actually used?

  • In real-world medicine, human patients receive only:
    • Human-donated blood and blood components.
    • Synthetic or bioengineered oxygen carriers under research or in very controlled settings.
  • So to the question “which animal blood can be transfused to humans” , the practical answer today is: none safely or routinely , and any attempt outside research settings would be highly risky and unethical.

Information gathered from public forums or data available on the internet and portrayed here.