Discussion question about past lives, collective consciousness, reincarnation, and near death experiences

So my spiritual journey has come to me over time through some unusual avenues. The initial experience was an overwhelming negative one I experienced with a friend while hitchhiking but opened my mind to another realm. From there first hand paranormal stories like found on Otherworld podcast (also where I was interviewed about my own experience). This has all opened my mind and led me down the rabbit hole of NDEs, etc. I am a pretty scientific minded person and I LOVE the idea of science meeting spirituality to form a universal consciousness theory concerning our reality at some point. But anyway the research being done by the Department of Perceptual Studies at the Virginia Institute of Medicine into past lives claimed by children and researched and proven along with NDEs that all form a picture of a maybe infinite but definitely never ending consciousness that we simply dissolve back into after leaving our bodies. My question is, I wonder if there are different collectives of consciousness out there? I believe there is only one as a TOTAL but I guess more so I'm curious because I never hear about people reincarnating as animals through any of this verifiable research. And you think about the octopus for instance, animals like that literally live in a different reality, not only the ocean but how they think, how their body works, the senses they use, it is a totally different thing and world. Like I wonder if there is an OCEAN consciousness where spirits return to the ocean. Same with other planets. Because while I have heard of people meeting aliens in near death experiences and even pets they've had it still seems like resoundingly humans reincarnate into humans. But you know what, humans are the only ones we can communicate and ask about this stuff so maybe it's just a result of our sample size bias because we can't talk to whales or dogs or octopi about their past lives. Idk, curious what other people think.