I admit that there is not much evidence in the literature bearing on our question, but I suspect that it is from lack of observation rather than lack of occurrence. The best evidence I know was gathered by Japanese investigators (Imanishi, 1957; Kawamara, 1959) of macaque cultural behavior back in the 1950's. The following account is so important that I will quote it in full:

'Among Japanese macaques, the behavior of some monkeys often implies the function of cultural inhibition. Mothers often show such behaviors to keep their infants away from dangerous objects, and the leaders do this also. When I was observing the sweet- potato-washing of the monkeys in Koshima, I provided, for their convenience, some washing places of wooden frames and buckets. One mother, trying to keep her infant away from one of these pools, pulled back the infant by its arm with her hand. At the Minoo Ravine, when I tried to capture monkeys of the B Troop by a trap, the predominant male held back the monkeys from approaching the trap and attacked the individuals that dared to do so. In the Takago-S Troop, we saw some infants trying to get the bait we had prepared for them, and being driven away by the leaders. In such a way, when any danger is likely to be incurred by the youngsters' " free floating behavior", some controlling actions were exercised to check them.'

How shall we interpret these observations, which were published by Kawamura in 1959? On the one hand, you may say that he is simply describing the phenomenon of punishment which is widespread in primate as well as human cultures. And, indeed, that is true. But where shall we draw the line between punishment, on the one hand, and anger against social injustice, on the other? It is possible, of course, to punish without anger, or to be angry without punishing; they are not identical. However, there is a close relationship between punishing behavior as it has evolved in the primates and the kind of moral outrage in peace activists that has engaged our attention. Peace activists are responding to what they perceive as incorrect or immoral behavior by the government, military and other institutions responsible for war. One could almost say that their activism reflects a desire to punish those responsible for the behavior of war.

The origins and functions of punishing behavior in primates is a very important topic that has received almost no attention. The eminent Japanese primatologist Kinji Imanishi called attention to its importance in a theoretical paper written in 1957 and translated and published in English in 1965, but as far as I know, since that time there has been practically no work on the questions he raised.

What is the value of punishing behavior? Kawamura points out, in the quotation above, that punishment serves to pass on the social knowledge of dangerous situations from one generation to another. The dominant males and the mothers of infants teach the young animals by punishment to avoid certain kinds of behavior or situations.

Punishing behavior differs in a very important respect from the kind of aggressive behavior that we observe in rats, called offense, which is probably homologous. The motivational stimuli for offense in rats consist of attributes of the opponent such as the odors which indicate whether it is male or female, mature or immature, familiar or unfamiliar. But in the case of punishment, we must deal with a completely new kind of motivating stimuli. It is not the stimulus attributes of the opponent, but the behavior of the opponent that elicits the aggressive response. This is a much more sophisticated kind of stimulus than those which operate in the case of the rat.

We may note here a paradoxical reversal between the offense of rats and that of primates and humans in the case of punishment. Whereas most offense of rats is directed against unfamiliar opponents, most of the .anger in the daily life of humans is expressed against those we love the most; at least, that is the finding of questionnaire studies by Averill and others.