Couple earned money on YouTube for skinning and eating endangered animals

Along with her husband, the woman was alleged of destroying the wildlife, but she claimed that she had no idea about the impact.

Cambodia's Ministry of Environment took tracked down Ah Lin Tuch and her husband Phoun Raty, who were found killing and eating the endangered species of animals near their home in Phnom Penh.

According to Metro, Tuch had been uploading the videos of her eating the animals on YouTube to present a 'survivalist' life and earn money through the online platform.

Authorities were alerted about the issue when several viewers of her YouTube videos noticed that she had been eating several animals that were enlisted under the protected species.

The source quoted Chea Sam Ang, head of the Environment Ministry’s General Directorate for Administration of Nature Conservation and Protection, as stating: "We are now in the process of taking legal action against them while the working group is preparing a report on the matter."

He added that only one amid all the species of animal that Tuch cooked was on the endangered list. However, most of those species were protected ones.

The endangered species on a high risk of extinction, which Tuch ate, was a fishing cat, which also goes by the scientific name of Prionailurus viverrinus. Other protected species that she ate for her YouTube video were a lizard, large heron, and several other species of birds.

The video clips of Tuch eating the endangered animals have been removed from the YouTube channel but several footages of her eating frogs, a king cobra, shark, and a stingray still exists.

In their defense, the couple has put forward the claim that they bought the wildlife from a local market and then cooked them. This has led the authorities to pursue an investigation as to whether the animals were bought from some illegal stores or killed in the wild itself.

The couple has also apologized for destructing the wildlife claiming that they had no idea what kind of animals or birds they had been eating or what its impact would be.