In the morning, my mother accidentally stepped on an ant. Usually, the ant would die instantly, but this time it was suffering for a minute or so. I noticed and asked my mom to kill it so that it didn't suffer for very long. She said, "No", and gave the excuse that you shouldn't kill something willingly. Well, for me it seemed more reasonable to kill it since it was going to die anyway. After all, killing it would have made it suffer less.

I killed the ant. I asked a few other people in my home about this and received a similar answer as that of my mother. "Killing something is never good", they said.

Is there anything wrong with my reasoning (ie. that I wanted to end the ant's suffering)? What is the most ethical thing to do in this situation?.