I disagree with you that defecting is the default action for animals in state/herd/pack/tribe-like communities. Unless you want to discuss how these kind of communities could form in the first place,
Are you claiming here that all herd or pack species are practising TFT, or that it is the default for herd/pack species? That seems empirically dubious: my understanding was that herd or pack species are mainly held together either by kin selection (the pack consists of close relatives) or by simple mutualism (e.g. being in the herd protects against predation, and it would be suicide to leave) rather than by something as sophisticated as TFT. It’s a while since I looked at the literature, but species practising reciprocal altruism with non-relatives seem to be fairly rare. But if you can cite studies, that would be helpful.
Are you claiming here that all herd or pack species are practising TFT, or that it is the default for herd/pack species? That seems empirically dubious: my understanding was that herd or pack species are mainly held together either by kin selection (the pack consists of close relatives) or by simple mutualism (e.g. being in the herd protects against predation, and it would be suicide to leave) rather than by something as sophisticated as TFT. It’s a while since I looked at the literature, but species practising reciprocal altruism with non-relatives seem to be fairly rare. But if you can cite studies, that would be helpful.