Underwater tiger wows crowds at California park

Odin, a five-year-old White Bengal Tiger dives for a piece of meat thrown to him by a trainer during a big cat show 14 June 2007 at Six Flags Discovery Kingdom in Vallejo, California, some 33 miles northeast of downtown San Francisco.

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.

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

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.