Swimming Tiger Wows Zoo Crowds

June 19, 2007 — A breath-holding, water-frolicking white Bengal tiger at a California wildlife park is causing a sensation that surprises even its trainers.

"Meat motivation," Nancy Chan, spokeswoman for Six Flags Discovery Kingdom just north of San Francisco said. "That is what gets Odin into that tank."

The tiger does not mind testing his lungs for a few chunks of raw horsemeat, but he has been known to lift his tail and spray the sunburned camera wielders when they crowd his island.

A parched wall of bamboo screens his domain from the cars rushing by on a nearby highway.

The strapping 445-pound cat is named for the chief god of Norse mythology, and park goers gulp down red slushy beverages while braving the 100-degree Fahrenheit heat for a glimpse of his antics.

"Someday parks like Six Flags may be the only places to see animals like these," said Drelick.

Where wild tigers once numbered close to 100,000, their numbers have dwindled to less than 5,000. Some scientists, said Chris Drelick, a new trainer at the park, believe that wild tigers could be extinct in a decade due to habitat loss and rampant poaching.

The last known wild white tiger, the result of a combination of recessive genes, was shot in 1958.

Trainers regularly leash the tigers and stroll them around the grounds. The claw marks on some trees indicate the cats' preferred scratching posts.

Odin prowls his domain to the strains of music fit for a Hollywood version of a Roman battle scene, while Lee Munro, the park's head trainer and "chief explorer" offers the tiger sips of low fat milk from a blue baby bottle.

Munro raised the cat since he was two weeks old, and though slight in stature, has built a bond with Odin based on mutual trust.

Munro hurls hunks of meat the size of softballs into a glass walled pool, and Odin pounces into the water, diving for treats with a strange expression that could be taken for excitement, while the crowd shrieks with joy.

"He's actually closing his nostrils and folding back his ears to keep the water from going inside," said Munro.

Odin's trainer left behind a job as a fraud investigator 13 years ago to follow a dream of working with animals. These days he rides an Asian elephant named Taj around the park, and juggles duties between the cat and the dolphin shows.

He also raised Odin's brother who can be seen slurping up underwater horsemeat treats in a similar show in a Six Flags park in New Jersey.

There is a tiger splash lineage in Vallejo. Odin learned his diving from a now 'retired' tiger named Kuma, and has since passed the trick on to a much younger cub named Fedor.

Fedor, though, still lacks Odin's underwater grace.

"That's how Odin was when he first started out," said Munro, still sopping wet from the tank. "He was klutzy, his butt was bobbing around in the air, and his tail hanging out, but now look at him."