load premade gganimate gif into rmarkdown chunk to caption

Question

I'm trying to caption a gif as a figure caption (fig.cap) in a rmarkdown file so I can reference it in my text. The gif has been pre-made as opposed to making it within the rmd file and not sure how to load it back into a chunk. Lets say the following gif was made through an rscript and saved:

library(gganimate)
aim <- ggplot(iris, aes(x = Petal.Width, y = Petal.Length)) + 
  geom_point() +
  transition_states(Species,
                    transition_length = 2,
                    state_length = 1)

animate(aim)
#save animation
anim_save("testing.gif")

Now if I open an rmd file and want to insert the gif I can do the following:

---
title: "testing"
date: "2/26/2020"
output:
  bookdown::html_document2
---

![this is testing](C:/testing.gif)

this runs but just puts it into the text of the document. I want to give it a fig caption but I cant load the gif into a chunk, I tried different variations of the following:

```{r giftest, eval=knitr::is_html_output(), echo=F, fig.show = 'animate', fig.cap = "this is testing"}

![](C:/testing.gif)
```

#also tried:
```{r giftest, eval=knitr::is_html_output(), echo=F, fig.show = 'animate', fig.cap = "this is testing",
fig.process= "C:/testing.gif"}
```

#and
```{r, fig.width=4, fig.height=10, fig.cap = "this is testing"}
![](C:/testing.gif)
```

The issue doesnt arise if you make the gif within rmd but this isnt what I want:

```{r, fig.width=4, fig.height=10, fig.cap = "this is testing"}
library(gganimate)
ggplot(iris, aes(x = Petal.Width, y = Petal.Length)) + 
  geom_point() +
  transition_states(Species,
                    transition_length = 2,
                    state_length = 1)

```

any suggestions? thanks

Answer 1

The following code chunk works for me:

```{r testing, fig.cap="example caption"}
knitr::include_graphics("testing.gif")
```