PULLMAN, Wash. — From elephants and penguins to horses and chickens, Matt Brooks has helped care for a world of wild and domestic animals. But the creature most responsible for a career that’s taken him to zoos across the country is the rhino.
“It’s my ‘totem animal,'” said Brooks, who will give the annual Halver Lecture in Comparative Animal Nutrition Tuesday, Feb. 25, at Washington State University. Brooks’ talk will help WSU students to learn about the diverse career pathways in animal science.
“Twenty years ago, I would never have thought I’d be where I am today,” Brooks said. “It’s been an amazing journey.”
It all began with an overnight fifth-grade class trip to the Riverbanks Zoo and Garden in Columbia, South Carolina, not far from where Brooks grew up. Touring behind the scenes, he saw how animals are fed and cared for. Some classmates were grossed out by the carnivore diets of birds of prey, but Brooks was hooked.
From then on, animals were his vocation. In high school, a teacher nicknamed him “Rhino Man” due to Brooks’ enthusiasm for the big, charismatic beasts. The nickname stuck; to this day, Brooks has rhino-themed artwork on his mantle and a custom rhino license plate number.
“They’re the sweetest animals,” he said. “They have really bad eyesight but a great sense of smell. They get a bad rap because they charge without looking. In some ways, that’s been my approach to life, too.”
Aa an aspiring pre-vet student in college, Brooks introduced himself to classmates: “My name is Matthew Brooks, and I love rhinos.” His professor immediately responded: ‘We can get you an internship!”
That intern role at Texas’ Fort Worth Zoo, working with his beloved rhinos, led to a job as the zoo’s lab technician and later nutrition department keeper. Eager to grow professionally, Brooks went back to school, earning his master’s degree in nutrition while studying fat metabolism in cattle.
A spur-of-the-moment road trip with friends to a Colorado meeting of the Comparative Nutrition Society expanded his contacts and led to doctoral studies in ruminant nutrition.
Brooks went on to launch the nutrition program at the Oregon Zoo and directed animal nutrition at the Indianapolis Zoo. More recently, he started his own comparative nutrition consulting company and is the small animal nutritionist for Nom Nom, a U.S. pet food company. At every step, Brooks has encountered new aspects of science and animal health.
“It’s my job as a nutritionist to keep animals healthy and make sure they have a good life,” he said.
Specialists who study the diets of many different animals, comparative nutritionists must adapt and improvise.
“You don’t have to know everything,” Brooks said. “But you do need to know how to find information or generate it.”
From the stacks of books and reference materials in his office to the connections made through school, career, and professional society, Brooks has many resources to turn to.
“I am still good friends with my college classmates,” he said. “We text daily.”
Brooks has helped solve many health challenges, from lowering excess iron in rhinos to improving mineral absorption in chickens. He underscores the need to listen closely to animal caretakers.
“They’re the ones who speak for the animals,” he said. Keepers may not have the same ideas as nutritionists, “but you have to work together.”
The power of zoos is their ability to create a connection between people and wildlife. Students, like the young Brooks, come to zoos to learn how to work with nature and protect it locally, nationally, and internationally.
“For a lot of us, nature isn’t real until you can see or touch it,” he said. “Once people feel it, they can then work to make sure these animals don’t go away. We get people to be part of it.”
Today, Brooks is working with the Riverbanks Zoo that inspired him all those years ago. At Oregon, he was able to take his own children to the overnight zoo events that made such a deep impression in his childhood. And he is now president-elect of the Comparative Nutrition Society that helped nurture his career connections.
One of the biggest lessons from his 22-year career is that ‘Plan A’ rarely works out.
“You’d better have plans B, C, and D ready to go,” Brooks said. “Do not pass up opportunities just because it might not be exactly what you want to do.”
Seeming tangents into zoos and animal nutrition ultimately defined his life and career.
“If I hadn’t taken that internship, I don’t know who I’d be,” he said. “If I hadn’t taken an off-the-cuff trip to that meeting, I wouldn’t have my PhD. You just don’t know where those little moments you run into in life will eventually take you.”
• The 2025 Halver Lecture in Comparative Nutrition, “You never know where the road will take you, when you learn to feed a zoo…”, is 5-6 p.m. Tuesday, Feb. 25, at 116 Todd Hall, WSU Pullman. Hosted by the WSU Department of Animal Sciences through the support of the Halver family, this event is free and open to all.
About CAHNRS
The land-grant mission of WSU’s College of Agricultural, Human, and Natural Resource Sciences is made possible through the U.S. Hatch Act of 1887 and the U.S. Smith-Lever Act of 1914. Respectively, these Acts fund experiment stations and cooperative Extension efforts that aid Northwest growers, provide nutrition and health education, support rural businesses, enhance our environment, and much more. Hatch and Smith-Lever capacity funds drive our work for a more resilient, prosperous, and sustainable Washington and are matched by state and local funds.