Snooty the manatee, a lumpy charmer for generations of schoolkids and snowbirds, is finally slowing down and showing his age. .. Gordon Bauer, an experimental psychologist at New College of Florida, has examined the sensory processes of manatees. He and his colleagues tried to include Snooty in a study, but there was a problem. “He’s a sweetheart, he really is,” Bauer says, laughing, “but he’s kind of old, so he kept dozing off during our experiments.”