It does have animations the problem is finding a tool that properly exports animations to 3ds file format now a days (3dsmax only partially supports them). Even if it fully supported the 3ds file format wouldn't really matter since 3ds only supports 1 bone per object (which is fine if you want to make a segmented robot but worthless for things with flesh).
Example of animation working with a model converted from 3ds to m2 through the original program I wrote.
http://acm.jhu.edu/~cryect/NoggFiles/cat.avi
Really should have went with a MAXScript instead but didn't realize till basically was done. 3ds is a too limited file format to work well with m2's.