Blood Types Trivia
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81 free Blood Types trivia questions with answers — science & nature quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
This blood types trivia quiz covers everything from the four ABO groups you learned at school to the 48 blood group systems that transfusion scientists actually track. It starts with the basics (which group is the universal donor, which is the universal recipient, what the + and - stand for), then follows the history: Karl Landsteiner's clumping test tubes in 1901, the confusing rival numbering schemes, the rabbit-and-macaque experiment behind the Rh factor, and the first blood bank in Chicago. From there it heads into the rare and strange: golden blood, the Bombay phenotype, why Duffy-negative blood protects against malaria, which soldiers had their group tattooed on, how a bone marrow transplant can change your type, and why Japanese employers and matchmakers ask about blood type at all. About a third of the questions are easy enough for a biology class; the rest are for nurses, lab scientists and quiz obsessives. Our broader blood trivia quiz covers cells, circulation and haemophilia. Every answer was checked against Wikipedia's articles on blood types, the ABO and Rh systems, transfusion and blood donation, and each explanation adds one more detail.
30 of 81 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Blood types are defined by antigens on the surface of what?
Red cells
Red cells: ABO antigens also coat many other body tissues, so a mismatch can also provoke an immune reaction against a transplanted organ.
Q 02Which two blood group systems matter most when matching blood for a transfusion?
ABO and Rh
ABO and Rh: ABO antibodies form naturally in early childhood, so even a first transfusion of the wrong ABO type can trigger a deadly reaction.
Q 03How many human blood group systems did the ISBT recognise as of 2025?
48
48: most matter little day to day, because antibodies against them are far less likely than ABO or Rh ones to cause a transfusion reaction.
Q 04Whose 1628 book describing the circulation of the blood made the idea of transfusion possible?
William Harvey
William Harvey: showing that blood travels round the body in a closed loop suggested it could be passed from one animal into another.
Q 05In 1665, physician Richard Lower pioneered blood transfusion by passing blood between two of which animal?
Dogs
Dogs: two years later he gave a man sheep's blood in front of the Royal Society.
Q 06Which blood type is often called the 'universal donor'?
O negative
O negative: hospitals reach for it in trauma and emergencies, when there is no time to find out a patient's own blood type.
Q 07What can very rarely make a patient with group A blood briefly test as a different group?
A severe infection
A severe infection: enzymes released by some microbes can turn the A antigen into a B-like one, so such patients should not be given blood carrying B.
Q 08What letter did Karl Landsteiner first use for the blood group now called O?
C
C: within a few years, doctors were using these groups to match donors to patients, making transfusion far safer.
Q 09The O in the ABO blood group system is often said to stand for a German word meaning what?
Without
Without: the German 'ohne' suits a group lacking both antigens, though some early researchers wrote it as the figure 0, for zero.
Q 10From 1914, doctors added sodium citrate to donated blood to stop it doing what?
Clotting
Clotting: kept liquid this way, donated blood could be stored for longer before being given to a patient.
Q 11Besides guiding transfusions, Karl Landsteiner's blood groups were used by lawyers in which kind of case?
Paternity suits
Paternity suits: blood groups pass from parents to children by fixed rules, so a mismatch could rule a man out as a child's father.
Q 12After World War I, the discoverer of human blood groups left Vienna and later worked in which American city?
New York
New York: after a spell at a small hospital in The Hague, he joined the Rockefeller Institute, where he later helped find the Rh factor.
Q 13Besides blood groups, Karl Landsteiner also co-discovered which virus?
Polio
Polio: he showed the disease could be passed on to monkeys, proving that it could spread.
Q 21The extremely rare Rhnull phenotype, lacking every Rh antigen, has been nicknamed what?
Golden blood
Golden blood: lacking Rh proteins, its cells are misshapen and fragile, so they break down sooner than normal ones.
Q 22Why did US blood banks for years refuse donors who had lived in Britain between 1980 and 1996?
Mad cow disease
Mad cow disease: its human form, variant CJD, can be passed on through blood transfusions.
Q 23What 1960s advance largely prevents Rh disease, in which a mother's antibodies attack her baby's blood?
An injection given to the mother
Q 14Which wartime blood policy did blood-bank pioneer Charles Drew publicly criticise as unscientific?
Segregating donated blood by race
Segregating donated blood by race: the armed forces first had Black donors turned away, then accepted their blood only if it was kept apart.
Q 15Canadian surgeon Norman Bethune set up a mobile blood transfusion service during which war?
The Spanish Civil War
The Spanish Civil War: his unit drove bottled blood to wounded soldiers near the front lines.
Q 16An AB parent and an O parent usually have children with which blood groups?
A or B
A or B: the AB parent passes on either A or B, while the O parent passes on O, which both A and B mask.
Q 17The 'Rh' in Rh factor was originally short for what?
Rhesus
Rhesus: the human antigen later proved different from the monkey's, but the name had already spread, so it was simply shortened to Rh.
Q 18Landsteiner and Wiener discovered the Rh factor using serum from which kind of immunised animal?
Rabbits
Rabbits: their serum reacted with the blood of most people tested, who became known as Rh-positive.
Q 19Rh disease, when an Rh-negative mother's antibodies attack her baby's blood, usually strikes which of her pregnancies?
A later pregnancy
A later pregnancy: her antibodies usually form after the first baby's blood mixes with hers at birth, then attack a later Rh-positive baby.
Q 20Which European people have the highest recorded frequency of Rh-negative blood?
The Basques
The Basques: a puzzle, since before modern medicine the trait's link to a deadly newborn blood disease worked against its carriers.
An injection given to the mother: it is thought to stop her immune system from reacting to Rh-positive cells leaked from the baby.
Q 24Lacking the Duffy antigen gives resistance to which disease?
Malaria
Malaria: the Duffy protein is the doorway the parasite Plasmodium vivax uses to invade blood cells, so cells lacking it resist infection.
Q 25The Duffy antigen is named after what?
The patient in whom it was found
The patient in whom it was found: Richard Duffy, a haemophiliac given many transfusions, had formed antibodies against his donors' antigen.
Q 26What medical procedure can permanently change a person's ABO blood type?
A bone marrow transplant
A bone marrow transplant: the donor's stem cells take over making blood, so once the patient's old cells die off, the new ones carry the donor's type.
Q 27Which group of German soldiers had their blood group tattooed on them during World War II?
Frontline Waffen-SS
Frontline Waffen-SS: after the war, Allied screeners made German soldiers raise their arms to check for the tattoo, and SS men were held or arrested.
Q 28Who performed the first documented transfusion of animal blood into a human, in June 1667?
Jean-Baptiste Denys
Jean-Baptiste Denys: after a later patient died, he faced court action, and France soon banned such transfusions.
Q 29James Blundell pioneered transfusing human blood in the 19th century to treat what?
Bleeding after childbirth
Bleeding after childbirth: seeing how often it killed his patients, he set out to find a remedy.
Q 30Soviet surgeon Sergei Yudin pioneered transfusions in 1930 using blood from what source?
Recently deceased donors
He reported his first seven cadaveric transfusions to a surgeons' congress in Kharkiv that September.