That is a network status indicator widget. It is also what was responsible for the Qt connection warning messages that you were mentioning earlier. It is supposed to let you know when you are accessing online files (e.g. via fish://, http://, ftp://, etc).
Okay. Is the icon supposed to blink or flash? Dance? I don't see the icon do anything when I surf the web.
No idea; it's an older feature copied by OpenSUSE from kdepim.
Tim