Creatures Caves

I was talking theoretically about a norn that was given genes to seek out heat and food when pregnant as an attempt to make them give birth in a warm place that also has a lot of food, as an example.

Since many pregnant norns get a huge boost in the homesick (comfort) drive, one simple way to attract them to heat would just be to add a gene that makes heat smell reduce homesickness... (or just replace 'norn home' smell with heat smell in the homesickness reduction gene norns already have...)

But my example could just as easily be about norn smell, or anything else, my point was that a norn will only pay attention to one drive or stimulus source at a time. It's impossible to get them to really take 2 or more things into account at the same time, and they also won't notice weaker sources of a stimulus if they are paying attention to that stimulus. If they are looking for food, they will pay attention to whatever food is most noticeable, and not take anything else into account like, for example, if there is something else closer to some less noticeable food that might also reduce a different drive.

As another example, let's say you made one want to look for food AND avoid other norns while pregnant, to find a good secluded area with a lot of food to give birth... Let's say instead of changing the smell that reduces homesickness, you just made its 'crowded' and 'hungry' go way up when pregnant instead... it would just go towards the most noticeable food source when looking for food, and not care at the time if there are 50 norns near that food source, or care that there is an area that has a little less food but no norns at all in the other direction.

A norn's actions are all about the one thing that norn happens to be paying attention to at that moment, which is always whatever is most stimulating or interesting to that norn right then. The most likely outcome in this particular case is the mother goes to the closest area with food regardless of any other norns around it, then starts smacking everybody that comes near her... she would almost certainly never bring herself to move away from that area to make it to a less obvious source of food that happens to be more secluded, since she would be constantly ravenous and keep wanting to go back to the food source she is most aware of.

You are right though, I don't see anything about heat smell in c3/ds norns genes (in a civet norn's genome anyway), other than a half-life for it. It would probably be easy enough to add genes that make the amount of heat smell affect the coldness and hotness drives, though. In c1 I noticed my norns occasionally paying attention to the stove and trying to move towards it long after they left that area, even though they had no previous interactions with the stove, so I think it's possible they may have been cold and seeking out warmth, or if not, at least noticing the warmth as a source of stimulus that was interesting to them at that moment.