HOUSTON - It's the viral video everyone is still talking about - The moment a 600-800 pound male sea lion pulled a little girl into the water.
"They were very startled and afraid, and I don't blame them," said Sophia Darling, senior supervisor of sea lions at the Houston Zoo. "They're very big, so if you don't know their natural behavior, you could see this as an attack."
But Darling says this was not an attack, but just a curious sea lion in the wild.
"The animal was very curious, sea lions are very curious," said Darling. "They're going to investigate and want to know more about what's going on."
The problem, she says, is humans got too close.
"He got used to people feeding him, so just like humans, animals get frustrated if they're not getting that food," said Darling.
Darling says the sea lions you'll see at the Houston Zoo are different than ones in the wild. For starters they're used to working with people.
"Nobody has a relationship with an animal like we do with the animals that we take care for," said Darling.
But even the professionals are very careful.
"We never forget that these are not domesticated animals," said Darling.
The video has now been since more than 19 million times on YouTube, and it's spurring lots of new interest in sea lions at the Houston Zoo and across the country.
"They don't want to come after people," said Darling. "As long as we respect their space, you can easily not see any "attacks" or human interactions."