Babra sculpture
Description:
The sculpture "Babr" is a monument in the city of Irkutsk and is located in a square on Lenin Street. This monument depicts a tiger holding a sable in its teeth. The animal was borrowed from the coat of arms of the city and it is believed that the word "babra" in the Sakha language means tiger.
When Alexander II changed the coat of arms to "babra" in his description, foreign officials, who often served in government offices at the time, did not notice the difference between "babra" and "beaver". As a result, the tiger was made a beaver tail with webbed paws, which made it look like a large marten. The monument is cast in bronze and weighs almost seven tons.
Initially, the babre was a heraldic animal of Yakutsk, but since 1690 it was moved to the coat of arms of Irkutsk, where an unusual animal became a symbol of the city.