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[cory]

When you create a zone, you can designate it as a pit, and throw animals in it.

Why does this feature even exist?  I've never seen a reason to throw animals in a pit...

[Funtimes]

It's not just animals.

Useful for arenas, or just putting animals in a pit so they can breed without pathing.

[Brandstone]

It's also useful for creating a repeater, and sacrificing cats to the river/volcano/skydiving Gods.

[CapnUrist]

I've had an issue with pitting animals myself, and I can only assume that I'm missing some part of the equation. I can pit animals just fine, and even make those pits inescapable for the animals without trapping the miner who levels the ramp (constructions are great). However, what if I want to get the animal out again later, say, for butchering, or recovering the young for some purpose? Doors don't stop pathing, and floodgates wouldn't keep the animals from pouring out. I had to install a cage into my butchery pit just to make sure there wasn't a parade back to my dining hall akin to that seen outside Noah's Ark every time the butcher went to fetch something.

[Brandstone]

I haven't tested it since I usually just stuff them all into a cage, but zoning a meeting area under the pit may limit their escape attempts.

[Gnauga]

Floodgates act as walls if they're connected to a lever, which promptly activates them.
And you can also pit ambushers or sieging creatures, by the way. Pit them off a 15-z high tower onto some exceptional upright steel spikes.

Upon impact they fly what I estimate to be an entire embark tile. Or parts of them do, at least.

[NecroRebel]

Pit zones are useful for executions; pit a captive goblin or other hostile over a long drop, and they're dead, no real effort required. Pitting wild animals into an execution shaft whose bottom is made from a refuse stockpile near a butcher's shop is also useful; the animal will fall, splat, and then the butcher will immediately see a wild animal's corpse on a refuse stockpile and decide to go butcher it.

However, the use I find I take advantage of most for animal pits is to make pens. You see, during the last months of 40d, I consistently played with the CatSplosion mod active, which made the playable race sapient cats, which were carnivorous, so I had to develop an efficient means of getting lots of meat without having wandering tame animals kill my FPS. The method I developed was, basically, this:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Code: [Select]

Z-level 0:
=+=
=+=
=+=
=+=
===

Z-level +1:
===
=H=
=H=
=H=
===

Z-level +2:
+++
+.+
+.+
+.+
+++

+ denotes floor
= denotes wall
H denotes a hatch over open space
. denotes open space

Link a lever to each hatch (I usually put the levers on z-level 0, directly beneath the hatch they're linked to) before you seal the pen with a constructed wall (or a perpetually-forbidden door, or a floodgate, or whatever else you want to seal it with). Dump animals in the top and let them breed. The animals will wander around that 3x1 area, spreading them out more-or-less evenly over each hatch, but since they can't path more than 2 tiles away from themselves, their FPS drain is relatively minimal. Occasionally, when you want meat/leather/other animal parts, designate all of your animals for slaughter, pull one of the levers and ~1/3 of your animals will drop down, where your butcher will go to town.

I usually make several such pens and put one species of animal in each, so I can just designate all members of that species for slaughter instead of all animals period. Basically, this design mitigates the problem of FPS loss from livestock without hindering their breeding, and solves the problem of "how do I get some out without letting them all out" by making the exit through the bottom.

If you do the design with wild animals instead of tame, you can also make the "exit" on the bottom lead directly into a deep shaft with a refuse stockpile at the bottom, to take advantage of the butchery behavior mentioned at the start of this post. Don't do this with tame animals, though; butchers won't butcher dead tame animals, only live ones.