A team of scientists with the Sea Mammal Research Unit, School of Biology, University of St Andrews, in the U.K. has found that gray seals are able to monitor their blood oxygen levels as a means to prevent drowning. In their paper published in the journal Science, the group describes experiments they conducted at a pool with captured gray seals involving changes to oxygen and carbon dioxide levels in the air.
The research paper seems to indicate that we do, but to an extremely limited extent compared to seals, according to my wildly uneducated reading of it. I think that’s what I’m getting at. I wonder if there’s a way to buff that stat with technology to make us, at least temporarily, more resistant to hypoxia.
https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adq4921