In traditional Mandarin Chinese, 牠 (Pinyin: tā 🔊) is a third-person singular pronoun for animals. So it’s a different “it” from 它 “it”.
牠, just like 他 and 她, is a phono-semantic compound, in this case of semantic 牜, a radical form of 牛 “ox”, “cow” etc., and phonetic 也.
牠 is not found in simplified Chinese. Instead, the same 它 is used for all non-human objects, animate or not.
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In Mandarin Chinese, 她 (Pinyin: tā 🔊) is a personal pronoun “she” or “her”.
According to Wiktionary, 她 is a phono-semantic compound of semantic 女 “female”, “woman” and phonetic 也 (yě 🔊, which, however, sounds nothing like tā). This is the rare case when it is known who and when invented this character:
Originally a variant of 姐 (jiě, “elder sister”). Later repurposed as a feminine third-person pronoun influenced by European languages, with the glyph being the result of replacing the 人 (“person”) radical in 他 (tā) with 女 (“woman”). Linguist Liu Bannong is credited with coining this use around the 1910s.
Liu Bannong (1891—1934) also popularised its use by writing the lyrics for a 1930s “hit” song 教我如何不想她 (Jiào wǒ rúhé bùxiǎng tā, “Tell me how to stop thinking of her”) composed by Yuen Ren Chao.
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In Mandarin Chinese, 他 (Pinyin: tā 🔊) is a personal pronoun “he” or “him”. It also can mean “other” or “another”.
According to Wiktionary, this character is a phono-semantic compound of semantic 亻, a radical form of 人 “person”, and phonetic 也 (yě 🔊, which, however, sounds nothing like tā). Lawrence J. Howell writes in his Etymological Dictionary of Han/Chinese Characters that 他 is
a variant form of 佗, and thus the meanings another person → other; separate.他 did not become gender-specific until 20th century:
Originally gender-neutral before the 1910s, when modern 她 (tā, “she; her”) was coined; now usually refers to males (also occasionally refers to females).
他 is used in many compounds in the meaning “other”/“another”:
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