If one kills an animal, when does one get the reaction: in this life or the next or in between?

From: Apuva Pradhan

1- If i kill i cow in this life, the cow will kill me by becoming a human and me becoming a cow. When does this reaction take place i.e. does the Cow become a human in it’s very next life or it has to wait till it transmigrates to the human form of life?

2- Also, i heard someone mention in a lecture that this reaction “Cow becoming a human and man becoming a Cow” is settled in the Hellish regions i.e. It is not settled here on the Martya loka.

Can you kindly shed light on this please? 

Transcript

This is an AI-generated transcript and may contain some errors.
Question. If I kill, how does this reaction take place? That is, does the cow become a human in its very next life? Or it has to wait till it transmigrates to the human form of life? Also, I heard someone mention in the lecture that this reaction, cow becoming a human, or man becoming a cow, is settled in the hellish regions.
That is, it is not settled here on the Matya Loka. Answer. Lord Krishna describes in the Bhagavad Gita, that the way karma works is quite complex.
And the scriptures do give us indications of how karma works. And one such example is of, say, if a cow is killed by a human being, then the cow will kill a human being. However, this is one specific instance.
This is not necessarily the only way in which the karmic reaction has to work out. In the Puranic literature, there are many stories in which karmic reactions work out in various ways. And for that matter, in the 5th Canto, Srimad Bhagavatam, there are descriptions of various hellish planets, where certain sinful reactions are meted out for certain kinds of sinful actions.
Now, if we look at the kind of sinful actions that are described over there, whose reactions are described in the hells, they are by no means exhaustive. There are many sins which are not talked about over there, partly because in Vedic culture those kind of vicious activities were not current or were sometimes not even conceivable. So therefore, the principle that underlies all these action-reaction phenomena is that whatever actions we do, we are accountable for them and we will have to bear an equivalent reaction for whatever wrong we do.
But beyond that, the technicalities of how an action will bring about a reaction and where that reaction will come, whether in this life itself or on hell or in a future life and whether that future life will be in a human body or an animal body, these will vary according to time, place, circumstance. According to the super-soul and its agents, supervision, they will give the karmic reactions in the way that is best for the soul’s gradual spiritual unfoldment. And therefore, these are possibilities that the soul in a human body may become a cow and the soul in a cow’s body may become a human, but these are not necessities.
And there may be alternative ways in which things can also happen. And that’s why we needn’t get too much caught up in the technicalities of when and where the reactions will come. We need to recognize the underlying important principle that we are accountable and the reactions will surely come.
And therefore, it is best for us to not only avoid such vastly simple actions ourselves, but also do what we can to encourage people to stop doing these actions also.