Learner Dad: Is it possible to watch The Secret Life of the Zoo without having a sex education chat with your kids?

Is it possible to watch The Secret Life of the Zoo without having a sex education chat with your kids? Well, we’re about to find out.

Our two — aged seven and five — love animals. They particularly like a run around Fota Wildlife Park, saying how they want to be zookeepers when they grow up.

They also like watching cartoons such as Teen Titans Go and Oddbods in their half hour of TV time before they go to bed. My wife and I usually look at our phones during this time, because we’re wrecked and over the age of 10. It isn’t what you’d call family time — I’d love if we could watch something together, like families do on Instagram.

Well, we can now, after my wife discovered The Secret Life of the Zoo on Channel 4’s All 4 app. It’s a behind-the- scenes look at animals and keepers in Chester Zoo and I can’t think of better family viewing on any platform, anywhere. They even got Oscar-winner Olivia Coleman to narrate the first five series before she found better ways to use her talents than commentating on sexy-time for a pair of otters.

BABY MEERKATS BORN! 😍😍
Look how tiny they are… #TheZoo pic.twitter.com/WtcWy74rSI

— Chester Zoo (@chesterzoo) February 20, 2020

And there’s the problem. The show has transformed bedtime in our place — there is nothing like the sight of a baby giraffe to get our own babies hopping up into our arms for a bit of cuddle time before they go to sleep. But The Secret Life of the Zoo is all about the bonking — it’s basically Ibiza Uncovered, with slightly less wildlife.

This isn’t a bad thing. As the keepers keep repeating, most of the species there are threatened by extinction and the only way to reverse that is to persuade them to do a whole lot of mating. And given our culture’s 24/7 obsession with all things carnal, it’s almost a relief to see that most animals would rather sit in a tree scratching themselves than have sex with each other.

All this mating is like a horror show for my wife and I.

We can barely watch the male zebra hopping up on top of his girlfriend, in case one of our two asks the obvious question — why is he doing that?

They get it at some level. The other night there were two chameleons making eyes at each other. I looked over at my daughter, who was sitting there with her fingers crossed. I asked her why she had her fingers crossed. She said, I just really hope they get together. I left it at that.

I’ve no idea whether now is a good time to have ‘the chat’. A quick google of ‘when should you tell kids about sex’ returns a paragraph titled, ‘How to talk to kids about sex, from birth to the age of two’. So clearly the internet isn’t going to be any help.

I know I can’t wait much longer. I learned about sex from my second cousin when I was about nine or 10 — I can’t remember everything he told me but it’s a miracle that I ever managed to keep a girlfriend for more than a week.

My daughter is eight next year. I don’t want her to grow up like me, thinking that sex is weird or dirty, because no one told me otherwise. However, I’m not sure I want her starting point to be a three-second bonk between two chimps in Chester.

It’s too late to stop it now though. If we turn off The Secret Life of the Zoo, it’s only a matter of time before they cop on that we were embarrassed by the bonking. I don’t want them to think that. Mind you, that doesn’t mean I’m looking forward to having ‘the chat’ with them either. I’d be lion if I said otherwise. (Sorry. I’m planning to conceal my awkwardness with bad jokes.)