This is from an old article. Snooty actually DID die the other day in a tragic, nationally publicized accident. However, while he was still alive he was the subject of "Paul Is Dead"-style rumors.

Snooty isn’t just the world’s oldest manatee in captivity, he’s also the most gossiped-about.

You’ve probably heard the rumors. They intensify every year around this time: Snooty’s annual record-setting birthday.

The Snooty we see today, the rumors contend, is really Snooty 2.0. Or maybe he’s even the third or fourth Snooty.

It’s a consistently hot topic among visitors to the South Florida Museum, Snooty’s home for almost his entire life.

“We answer questions about it all the time,” said Jessica Schubick, the museum’s communications manager.

Museum officials aren’t sure how the rumor started. It may have originated, Schubick said, in the 1970s, when people figured out that SeaWorld parks all over the country had different orcas that they had named Shamu.

And, of course, it was fueled by the fact that Snooty is much, much older than manatees usually get.

So, the rumor goes, the original Snooty is long gone. When he died, and when theoretical ersatz Snootys died, the museum just went out manatee-shopping and picked up a shiny new one. Then, apparently, museum officials brought a 600-pound aquatic mammal through downtown Bradenton and carried it into the museum without anyone noticing.

Besides the logistics, there are some problems with the theory. Capturing wild manatees and keeping them (except for rehabilitation) is illegal, so the museum would have had to do something very, very bad, or done business with someone else who had, and hoped they wouldn’t get caught. Or they would have had to strike a deal with a facility that kept manatees. There are not many of those, and they’re not likely to sell their creatures. (And if they sold them, people would know about it.)