An animal sanctuary in Florida has announced the death of a chimpanzee it says was Cheetah, one of the most famous animal stars of the 1930s, who appeared with Johnny Weissmuller in Depression-era adventure films like “Tarzan the Ape Man” and “Tarzan and His Mate.” But the announcement drew skepticism and recalled a previous incident of mistaken chimpanzee identity.

Debbie Cobb, the outreach director at the Suncoast Primate Sanctuary in Palm Harbor, Fla., where this chimpanzee lived, told The Tampa Tribune that he was about 80 years old and died Saturday of kidney failure.

In the Tarzan film series, whose golden age spanned 1932 to 1948, Cheetah (sometimes spelled without the final “h”), was a comic and sympathetic sidekick whose intelligence sometimes seemed to rival that of his human co-stars like Weissmuller (who played the titular jungle lord) and Maureen O’Sullivan (who portrayed his civilized love interest, Jane). The sanctuary said it believed that its Cheetah appeared in the films made between 1932 and 1934.

Cobb told The Tribune that the Suncoast Primate Sanctuary received Cheetah from Weissmuller’s estate in Ocala, Fla., around 1960. Of the 15 chimpanzees kept at the sanctuary, she said Cheetah was the most famous and an outgoing ape with a gentle personality who had long outlived the 35 to 45 years that chimpanzees typically survive in captivity.

“He was very compassionate,” Cobb said. “He could tell if I was having a good day or a bad day. He was always trying to get me to laugh if he thought I was having a bad day. He was very in tune to human feelings.”

Dr. Steve Ross, assistant director of the Lester E. Fisher Center for the Study and Conservation of Apes at the Lincoln Park Zoo in Chicago, said he found it “very improbable” that a chimpanzee who appeared in films in the 1930s would still be alive in 2011.

“To live into your 70s is really pushing the limits of chimp biology,” Ross said in a telephone interview. “Eighty is tough to swallow.”