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What happens to the soul after birth is graphically described by Krishna in the Bhagavad-gita: "Within the body is the soul, and just as the soul passes from one's infant body to his youthful body and from his youthful body to his aged body, so the same soul passes into another body at death."
Later in the Bhagavad-gita Lord Krishna compares the process of changing bodies to discarding an old set of clothes and donning a new set. But the soul's "new set of clothes"--his new body--need not be human.
There are 8,400,000 species, including all kinds of one-celled creatures, aquatics, plants, reptiles, insects, beasts and human beings. By the law of karma, what kind of body a person gets in his next life depends on the acts he performs and the desires he cultivates in this life.
