Creatures Caves

Thank you for the link, Papriko!

Noting the native food sources.

The Meso is extremely nutrient-rich: counting both wild plants and dispensers, it has:

Food: Peaking Pie (79 1), Carrot (79 2), Tuba (79 1)
Fruit: Yarn Fruit (78 1), Lemon (78 1), Bramboo Berry (78 1)
Seeds: Star Seed (77 1), Justanut (77 1), Explodonut (77 1), Tuba Seed (77 3)

Injecting the "Awkwood Creeper" (79 1 + 77 1) agent from the Hardman Norn pack adds a fourth 'food' to the environment, which drops pellets onto the middle layer. Injecting the "Popping Pappus" (77 1) agent from the Treehugger Norn pack adds a source of seeds that will happily propagate on the top and bottom layers.

Even without DLC, every layer of the Meso is designed to provide at least one of all three dietary categories. The middle, obviously, contains the Empathic Vendor, which has one of each. The top layer has a lemon dispenser, justanut dispenser, and an initial population of wild tubas. The bottom layer is most strongly focused on "foraged food" with its carrots, bramboo, and explodonuts.

In addition, with the Steam edition's bramboo fix, it seems like it's genuinely impossible for any of the "wild" foods of the meso to go permanently extinct in the case of overconsumption.

Meanwhile, none of the Shee Ark terrariums have near this diversity. The "norn home" smell in the Meso being extremely strong relative to the Norn Terrarium's own scent emission is the main reason Norns tend to gravitate towards and overpopulate the Meso in a docked world, but I can't imagine the strongly concentrated smell of large amounts of tubas in a tiny space is helping the issue.

The Norn Terrarium's native edibles are this:

Food: Carrots (79 1), Cheese (79 1)
Fruit: Apples (78 1)
Seeds: Pumperspikel (77 3), Grass Seed (77 3), Foxglove Seed (77 1)

In addition, injecting Popping Pappus introduces a fourth source of edible seeds.

The main problematic element is "food" - only the top left hill is ever warm enough for carrots (C3 and DS 'strains' alike) to germinate. (And I've seen it go extinct more than once.) Apple and pumperspikel can't go extinct, and the seed bank can autonomously fix grass or foxglove going extinct; however, when the seed bank tried to repopulate an extinct carrot supply, the spout's location is in the wrong place for the carrot to germinate.

(Meanwhile, the cheese dispensers are far out of the way relative to the apples and seeds, and I rarely - if ever - see creatures use them.)

For the Norn Terrarium carrot population to sustain itself without player intervention (such as in a wolfling run), it seems as though usermade patches that raise the entire terrarium's temperature (or, conversely, lower the temperature requirements of carrots) are mandatory. Without mods, it seems like the average Norn Terrarium population will get most of their fat-nutrition from pumperspikel and grass seeds in the long run, not from carrots or cheese.