Although are/were are used to form questions, they don't work with met. It should be have you met [her] before? (If these two people are both present, her is not necessary; you only need it if you're talking about someone who's not there at the time).
In questions that use subject auxiliary inversion (e.g. when You are ... becomes Are you ...?), and that don't use interrogatives (e.g. who/what/where/etc.), there is an easy way to tell whether or not you're using the correct auxiliary: simply rearrange the sentence to see if it makes sense as a statement.
For example:
Are you met before? You are met before.
-versus-
Have you met before? You have met before.
The second is the only one that makes sense. That's the easiest way to figure it out.
You do have one other option here; you could use do as the auxiliary. But in this case, it can't be used with met. You'd have to switch the verb to know for that to work. And it would need to be in the present tense. The rule that I've mentioned above still applies:
Do you met her? You do met her.
-versus-
Do you know her? You do know her.
You'll know to use know because it agrees with do in tense (i.e. both simple present).
Most often, these types of questions use have, had, or do.
Questions involving forms of to be (e.g. are/were), are generally about states of being/existential, mood/feelings/emotional states, location, and actions about to occur: (e.g. Are we going to leave now?, Are you there?, Are you mad?, Were they at the party?, etc.).
Depending on the context and temporal factors, you might be able to use did. This would make the main verb present tense though. If this is after the fact, you could instead say:
Did you meet her? You did meet her.
Did you know her [back then]? You did know her [back then].
Best Answer
Either one can be correct. Without knowing the rest of the sentence you heard, it's not possible to know what the speaker meant.
If you were an animal generally refers to an unreal situation. An example is
If you are an animal generally refers to a possibility.
Note another type of expression is possible:
This is not a cause and effect relationship, as in the case of many conditionals.