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Kids are often satisfied with simpler answers than you might expect. "It's just something they do" is usually accepted by my kids (ages 5 and 3).
When it's not enough, I limit the explanation to whatever I think is appropriate for their age and development. Something like, "animals do that to try to make babies", usually followed up by something like, "it's complicated, I'll tell you more as you get older."
Normally it’s the other way around—animals being frisky is just how they are, and children accept that. The difficulty is in explaining how adults can’t be frisky in public like dogs, and how it isn’t polite to talk about it either.
It's appropriate to talk to children about sex from a young age. Not doing that doesn't protect them, it makes them a target for predators.
Also, get your pets fixed, people.
Genital mutilation is weirdly accepted in some circumstances
I tell mine pretty much the facts about everything like that. Then follow it up with a lesson on when it's commonly acceptable to talk about it.
Eh, there's no single magic bullet. You stay honest, but past that, you gotta tailor it to the individual kid. Some of them will want a more "scientific" explanation (as in the big brush strokes of reproduction), some will zone out if you say anything past the "that's what animals do" level of response.
The closest to a general rule you can get is to answer what they actually asked, not what you think they're asking. Kids tend to ask things in a very immediate wat, exactly like your example "mommy, what's that?" So you answer what that is in the simplest terms you can and let follow up questions shape the conversation.
You also tend to want to stick to their vocabulary range, rather than trying to expand it at the same time as answering them. To a five year old, having you try to explain what the word masturbation means would be way, way more problematic than the fact that the animal is masturbating, if you see what I mean. You'd just say that's how the lizard wants to play. They just don't have the vocabulary to understand the full explanation yet. So stay simple. If they're ten, you can expand more because they'll have the language map to understand what you're saying if you say "oh, it's trying to mate with the object"
But, you still have to shape that you the individual. Not every kid handles information the same way. Some kids might grasp the concepts of reproduction really easy, others might not, so you gotta stay flexible.
