Northumberland Zoo's Tiktok video on Gen Z terms goes viral

The family-owned Northumberland Zoo, home to more than 90 animal species, has gone viral on social media following a video of the zoo's owners engaging in popular Gen Z terminology including 'very mindful, very demure', 'smol' and 'GOAT' - which translates as the greatest of all time.

Gen Z refers to people born in or after 1997 until the early 2010s.

Maxine Bradley, whose parents own Northumberland Zoo in Felton near Morpeth, said the video has had 7.7 million views on TikTok alone. 

Brian and Linda at the North East England Tourism Awards earlier this year, when the Zoo got the Gold Award for Ethical, Responsible and Sustainable Tourism (Image: Supplied) The video shows Brian and Linda, both in their 60s, visiting the Zoo exhibits and using youthful terminology, such as 'slay' and keeping straight faces.

The video features Livingstone Fruit Bats, one of the Zoo's main conservation breeding programmes. Northumberland Zoo is the only collection in the UK to house this critically endangered species, with more than 100 in captivity worldwide and 1,300 remaining in the wild.

Brian and Linda used Gen Z terms including 'smol', which means small (Image: Northumberland Zoo)Maxine said: "I did all the filming and editing and it was very important that they kept their straight faces with a deadpan attitude.

"I had seen the version that David Field had done for Edinburgh Zoo and wondered if I might be able to get my parents on board. I knew this would be a challenge as I also run the Zoo YouTube channel and I can never get my mum to appear on it.

Brian and Linda used Gen Z terms including 'main character energy', which refers to someone who lives as though they're the main character of a film or a novel (Image: Northumberland Zoo) "The video has gone so much further than any of us expected. I knew it would do well because it was on-trend - but I didn't think it would do that well.

"To date, we have had 7.7 million views on TikTok, 500,000 on Facebook, and 280,000 on Instagram - but this is just the tip of the surface. Due to the popularity on our channel, other larger channels like Pubity and Ladbible picked up the video and shared it as well. On their platforms, they have gained significantly more views - so in total the video has been viewed tens of millions of times around the world."

The Zoo has since been featured in Newsweek, BBC Breakfast, Sky Morning News and has even been contacted by media outlets in Australia and Europe for interviews.