I have NoScript running in default deny mode, I saw blank white boxes where these animated gifs should have been. The rest of the article was fully readable, with no animation distractions.
Why would noscript block a gif...? I'm going to have to take a closer look at how this website places the gifs there.
There's quite a lot of news sites whose in-line static JPGs all vanish with NoScript. I really have no idea what people think they're doing these days.
They use a static thumbnail image that is changed to a gif/webm when it loads.
Because the gif's are not included using basic <img> tags, but instead they are inserted by javascript code. As to why, I don't know why.