Feasibility of having a lion trap door pit?

Frame challenge

It will stink in your office. Every time the trapdoor opens you will get a waft of rotting meat and lion sh*t. Surely there must be a better way. Why not imitate the Romans and put on a show? That will make everyone want to obey you.

Frame Challenge: Why a Lion?

Lions don't eat everything like crocs do, and a normal lion won't eat a 136 lb. human by itself (at least, not in one sitting). No no, you need something more voracious, something more dangerous (something that can't be killed with a spear alone).

The way I see it, you have a few options:

1. GM Hippo Hippos are surprisingly carnivorous, with a powerful bite force, and they can move surprisingly fast considering their size, with a max speed of 30 MPH. Being big, they're also hungry. Remember that powerful bite force I mentioned? With the right genes (I'm thinking hyena or Tasmanian Devil), your hippo will not only be able to crush and devour victims bones and all, but will be able to take it's victims attempts at defense.

Your options are A) Brute and B) Raider.

A: Brute With Tasmanian Devil genes, your hippo will have a greater bite force and be much more willing to eat whatever you give it. The narrower snout, viciousness, and opportunism from the Devil will make this hippo quite an attacker, but rhino hide (with osteoderms or pangolin scales) will make it nigh-impenetrable. Putting bear genes into its limbs will make it both more agile and more capable-while hippos can't rip people apart (just crush them between their jaws), bears can and do.

B: Raider This hippo variant will be built lean, mean, and deadly; the frame should be more like a rat, but with longer, stouter legs, with Smilodon-like fangs to match. The snout should be more narrow, like a crocodile's, and to protect the Raider, put in anaconda muscle (oh yeah) and thorny devil skin. That should terrify them, yes? (And bring to mind the ROUS....)

2. Titanoboa If you don't know what it is, I would look it up. It's a giant anaconda capable of eating crocodiles, let alone people, and anacondas are already capable of eating people, according to Livescience.com: "Anacondas have a legendary status as “man eaters.” There have been reports of humans being eaten by anacondas, though none have been verified. The scientific consensus is, however, that an anaconda could eat a human. They eat prey that is tougher and stronger than humans, according to Rivas. Green anacondas are known to eat white-tailed deer, which weigh about 120 lbs. (54 kg), so it is reasonable to assume they could eat a human of at least the same size."

Put in some black mamba for greater speed, some komodo dragon for aggression, and train it to swallow people whole (for fear factor) and you have a real "winner" here.

3. Swarm of Rats I'm dead serious, emphasis on dead. wwitrenchlife.weebly.com tells us "Rats were not rare in the trenches. In fact, millions of them invaded the trenches. Two types of rats dominated the trenches: brown and black rats (Duffy, 2009, para, 4). A pair of rats could produce around 900 offspring annually (Duffy, 2009). With ample amounts of food, these beasts flourished. One can use the term “beast” because many soldiers claimed that, in some cases, the rats grew as big as cats."

A swarm of rats as big as cats?! Yeah, that's more than a little bad. Put in some raccoon as well (for cunning and yes, aggression) and you have something really, truly dangerous.

If all else fails, go for a pool of piranha.

I think its likely your minions will fight back against the lion, which is to say you may have to have a veterinarian on staff to fix the lion up after some adrenalin crazed ex officer gouges out its eyes in self defence. 99/100 your lion will kill the person, but the 100th might be able to inflict enough damage to drive off the lion.

If your minion happens to have a knife or weapon of some type, they might just beat the lion. It only takes a spear to defeat a lion in classic African tribes (though shields or dogs also help)and in at least one case a man killed a tiger with a knife. The tiger attack nearly killed him, but thanks to prompt medical treatment he survived. I doubt you'll want to fix up someone you condemned, but losing your lion will suck if something like that happens.

I think gators is still the best answer as mentioned by others, since they eat the bones whole and although they don't seem dangerous, you can watch the hope drain from your minions eyes while he slowly realizes hes doomed. Multiple animals is also more dangerous than a single one, and gators are easier to keep captive and replace if it dies.

My immediate concern is that your lion will likely get bored. An underground pen where nothing happens except food falls in a few times a week. If he gets too bored he will jump out when the trap door opens and look for some excitement.

You could make the pit deep enough that he can't jump out, and then probably the food will die when it hits the floor and the lion is not much use.

It sounds like you have the lion trained to stay in the little pen behind a thick metal door so it can't get out while the trapdoor is open. I'm sure this is even more boring, but you could tell the lion trainer to just send it behind the door when you're about to dump somebody in the pit, so they don't land on the lion and hurt it, and the lion can't jump out.

I think the better solution is to have a pleasant outdoor environment for your trained lions, and only send one in when you have a job for them. Of course, this provides some chance that someone can get past the lion and outside, into the lions' den.

Don't depend on humans to feed your lion. That's likely to leave you occasionally killing people who haven't done anything wrong, just because the lion is hungry. And that will make your minions less loyal.

Also if you don't feed your lion regularly to make it extra hungry when it finds a human (who is likely to smell bad, and be covered with inedible uniform, and who might even be armed), the lion is also likely to be less loyal to you. He will want to get away.

Better to get the lion trainer to teach the lion to play with a human-size dummy. Like a cat playing with a mouse. Maybe sometimes give it humans to play with for part of the training. If you teach it to play with humans on command, for a reward, it is less likely to do it on its own when it won't get the reward. That's an extra benefit.

So when you dump the human in and the cat gets the signal to play with it like a mouse, you get lots of fun and the cat gets lots of fun, even when it is well-fed. Just make sure the human can't hurt kitty. If he manages to kick the lion in the jaw and damage its ability to bite, that will be a very sad kitty long after the man is dead.

I don't know much about lion training, and I wonder whether they would like catnip rewards. I'm sure food rewards are good.

That would be quite an overfeeding for the lion.

The National Zoo in DC has six lions. Together, they eat 500 pounds of beef a week. That pegs a single lion at consuming roughly 83 pounds a week. It definitely wont find the need to consume 615 pounds of human.

Another thing to consider is that you are giving them the bare minimum living space. The Global Federation of Animal Sanctuaries requires 1200 sq. feet for 2 lions. That suggests that your 700 sq. ft. pen is barely sufficient for storing a lion. As such, they may not be the great killer you hope. They may be rather down and depressed. I certainly hope you don't keep them in the 50sq. ft pen except at feeding time!

Also, you are likely to have some bones to dispose of. In the wild, there's an entire food chain dedicated to finishing off a meal like this. In here, it's all up to the lion. Given that they're already overfed, it's unlikely they'll clean up your bones for you.

But don't worry. I'm certain this won't hamper your creativity as an evil genius.