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This is always a fascinating discussion and seems to lead in a variety of directions. To recap my position, I don't believe animals have a spiritual realm within them. Their actions will not be weighed on Judgment Day. Christ did not die to pay for the sins of animals. Animals cannot sin.

I also don't believe men are two separate components, body and soul. Man is what God made him, one aspect of the whole man is physical and one aspect of the whole man is spiritual.

All the elect will be acquitted of their sins by Christ's sacrifice while the condemned will suffer the consequences of their own sins without the justification of Jesus Christ.

Before men are born as body and spirit, they are not sitting somewhere waiting to breath air. They do, however, exist perfectly and completely designed by and through and in the mind of God who willed all things from before the foundation of the world, according to His perfect plan of creation. All men will be born exactly as God wills them to be born and live the lives God ordains for them, with every hour and every hair numbered.

I found this interesting link that offers worthwhile insight...

Man as Body and Soul

"...The soul, then, is the whole person. The body also is the whole person. Neither soul nor body is a detachable part of man. Soul is man thinking, willing and living. It is the life, the me, the self in its acting and feeling. Body is the same whole person seen from the perspective of his form and substance. In the words of Pedersen, "The body is the soul in its outward form."
Body and soul are like the biblical expressions flesh and spirit. They do not refer to two parts of man but to the whole man from two different perspectives. The medieval church read flesh and spirit with Grecian glasses. She understood them to mean the higher and lower nature. This had disastrous consequences for the church's view of piety and salvation. Luther returned to the biblical view that flesh means the whole man in his natural, sinful state, while spirit means the whole man led by the Holy Spirit..."

Regarding "nephesh"...

Says The Interpreter's Dictionary of the Bible:

The word "soul" in English, though it has to some extent naturalized the Hebrew idiom, frequently carries with it overtones, ultimately coming from philosophical Greek (Platonism) and from Orphism and Gnosticism, which are absent in [nephesh]. In the OT it never means the immortal soul, but is essentially the life principle, or the living being, or the self as the subject of appetite and emotion, occasionally of volition.

The Interpreter's Bible also says that nephesh in Genesis 2:7 means "a complete person." The New Bible Dictionary says that it is "clear from Gn. ii. 7, the primary meaning [of soul] is 'possessing life'. Thus it is frequently used of animals (Gn. i. 20, 24, 30, ix. 12,15, 16; Ezk. xlvii. 9)."
We must not read a presupposed "religious" meaning into the Hebrew word nephesh. In many Old Testament texts nephesh plainly means the animated, living person. We cannot impose a "spiritual," metaphysical meaning on soul where, for instance, a person is represented as saying that his soul desires physical food, water or honey (Prov. 25:25; 27:7; Num. 21:5; Deut. 12:15, 20-21). Because the Hebrews made no sharp distinction between the physical and the psychical, the word soul can have either a physical or psychical emphasis. The whole living person is always in view.
The word soul can be applied to a person's thinking, emotions, will or action (Gen. 49:6; Deut. 4:29; Job 7:15; Ps. 86:4; Isa. 1:14). Quite often soul is used where we would use the word person (Lev. 7:21; 17:12; Ezek. 18:4). When the Bible talks about seventy souls going down to Egypt, it obviously means seventy persons. The word soul is also used as a synonym for the personal pronouns I, me, myself (Judges 16:16; Ps. 120:6; Ezek. 4:14). It can even be used to designate a dead body (Lev. 21:11; Num. 6:6; Hag. 2:13).
H. Wheeler Robinson says that of the 754 times the word nephesh appears in the Old Testament, it means principle of life 282 times, it has a psychical meaning 249 times, and it means the person himself 223 times.

[.. I also don't believe men are two separate components, body and soul. Man is what God made him, one aspect of the whole man is physical and one aspect of the whole man is spiritual. ..]

Have you ever seen a dead body?..
Whats missing?.. The spirit?.. WHAT?..

What is life?... DNA?... like that...

Thank you so much for sharing your beliefs and those two interesting excerpts!

Indeed, this is a fascinating discussion. No doubt one's doctrine or traditions, understanding, epistemology and personal spiritual experiences has great bearing on how he views physical/spiritual consciousness/mind/will body/soul/spirit life/death and so on.

No wonder it goes in so many directions! LOL!