Water flies as a young white tiger shakes itself dry in a pool at California’s Marine World Africa USA. (Now called Six Flags Discovery Kingdom.)

White tigers are extremely rare in nature, and many seen in zoos today are produced through controversial inbreeding. White tigers can be born to normal-colored tigers if both parents carry the recessive gene for white coloring.

(Photo shot on assignment for, but not published in, “Making Room for Tigers,” December 1997, National Geographic magazine)