I second the sibling comment that it was absolutely possible to have animated icons on Windows 3.1(1).
I was only 11 or 12 at the time, but I distinctly remember the two Windows 3.1(1) machines in our school computer center having animated icons on their desktop in '93 or '94, but I know I couldn't do the same on my own PC at home, so they must have had some extra software installed to make that possible.
My assumption today is that being so long ago it would be some other format, but Wikipedia says GIF format was released in 1987 so it might have been.
I was only 11 or 12 at the time, but I distinctly remember the two Windows 3.1(1) machines in our school computer center having animated icons on their desktop in '93 or '94, but I know I couldn't do the same on my own PC at home, so they must have had some extra software installed to make that possible.
My assumption today is that being so long ago it would be some other format, but Wikipedia says GIF format was released in 1987 so it might have been.