I don't know. It's beyond me, and I don't know that I've ever read anything about it. However having said that, in the Jataka stories (these are supposedly stories about the Buddha in past lives), there were times when he was an animal, and he actually had wholesome states and developed them as an animal.
Now on top of that, as to real life experience, in Australia there's a particular bird called a Kookaburra. It's the bird that laughs, if you've ever heard about the laughing Australian bird, it sounds a bit like a laugh. Kookaburras have a habit of adopting baby Kookaburras that are lost. We've seen this. Rosemary's parents used to feed Kookaburras and other birds. A neighbor found a baby Kookaburra bird and didn't know where it was from, maybe it was from a tree, but it was a baby on the ground. They brought it to Rosemary's parents and said, "Here, you feed Kookaburras, this will get adopted." I'm not sure if her parents actually knew if it was true or not, but the other person knew it was. Her parents put it in a box and fed it a little bit. The very next time the big birds came in to get fed, one of them hopped over to the baby, looked at it and flew off. It wasn't even interested in what Rosemary's parents wanted to feed it and just flew off. Ten or fifteen minutes later it came back with a big worm. Now Australia has BIG worms, believe me, they're THAT big, I'm not exaggerating. They've also got those little baby regular guys but they have BIG ones too. OK, the bird came back with a big worm and immediately started stuffing it down the baby Kookaburra's mouth. It adopted it, took care of it, taught it how to fly, and off they went within days. So, it seems to me that perhaps that bird has a nice wholesome quality and developed it within that lifetime.