She shot a giraffe and then posed for a selfie. And now the internet is absolutely furious.

This beautiful mother of eight looks like the typical All-American girl next door…

Except her favourite hobby is taking smiling selfies next to dead exotic animals.

Warning: This post contains images that some readers may find distressing.

Rebecca Francis is now receiving death threats after graphic images of her next to her trophy animals have gone viral.

The social media storm was sparked when comedian Ricky Gervais tweeted this picture of the prolific hunter with a dead giraffe.

Related: Kendall Jones is a teenage hunter. And she’s looking for love.

Quite rightly, he asked: “What must’ve happened to you in your life to make you want to kill a beautiful animal & then lie next to it smiling?”

What must’ve happened to you in your life to make you want to kill a beautiful animal & then lie next to it smiling? pic.twitter.com/DyYw1T5ck2

— Ricky Gervais (@rickygervais) April 13, 2015

Gervais’ tweet has since been retweeted more than 26,000 times, with online punters calling for her head.

Tweets about the “vile woman” have labelled her a “disgrace” and a “poor excuse for a human being”.

The extreme hunter’s Facebook page has been flooded with comments, ranging from messages of condemnation to wishes of her sexual abuse and painful death.

Users have also mocked her claim to be “conservationist”.

Pro-hunting site Hunting Life published a statement from Francis, who claims she honoured the giraffe’s life and did not regret her actions, saying she was “grateful to be a part of something so good”.

“He was inevitably going to die soon and he could either be wasted or utilized by the local people,” she said in the statement.

“I chose to honour his life by providing others with his uses and I do not regret it for one second.”

She said the giraffe’s meat and bones were used by locals for food and jewellery.

Francis boasts on her website of completing the North American Grand Slam by shooting dead every subspecies of sheep with a bow and arrow.

She also brags about killing bears, moose, deer, antelope, springbuck and giraffe.

According to her Facebook page, the Utah woman is a passionate pro-hunting advocate who bought her first hunting licence at 14.

She won a TV competition Extreme Huntress in 2010 and co-hosted Eye of the Hunter TV.

Read more: This is not sport. It’s murder.

She is also a dental hygienist and real estate investor with three children and five step-children.

Online abuse is absolutely unacceptable. But we hope this smiling assassin rethinks her strange stance on “conservation”.