Add animated gifs to react web apps

I'm trying to define a transition state for my react web application when I'm publishing data to backend.

I want to show an animated gif in my render method.

So I import the gif image (like this https://media.giphy.com/media/3oEjI6SIIHBdRxXI40/giphy.gif )

using a simple import

import logo from '../assets/load.gif'

and add it to my render

like:

<img src={logo} alt="loading..." />

but I get an error in my react-dev server terminal

unknown character

How to add animated gif's to a plain react SPA.