The article examines the poetics of things in Kalmyk fairy tales about animals. The research material included both published and unpublished texts of Kalmyk fairy tales about animals in the original and translated into Russian, as well as legends and traditions. Despite the fact that when studying Kalmyk fairy tales about animals related to the genre, plot, composition, system of characters, and linguistic means, researchers touched upon such material culture to one degree or another, the objective world of such fairy tales did not become the object and subject of a separate study. Results. In representative Kalmyk tales about animals, object realities related to different spheres of material culture were found: types of housing and its decoration, non-residential buildings, tools and materials, household utensils, weapons and hunting tools, musical instruments, vehicles, etc. One of them is used by people and animals, others - only by people. Some objective realities are created by animals. In the plot collisions of fairy tales, things are used for one purpose or another by people and animals or only by people, while the same thing can have different functions, for example, attack and defense. In the only case, the thing is endowed with the magical ability of the donor. Some things reveal only the objective background against which certain events occur. Subject realities have both a universal and local, ethnic character.