another perl question

I fail to see how below answer is 1? can someone explain this for me?

DB<3> $string = "The cat sat on the mat";

DB<4> $animal = ($string =~ m/The (.*) sat/);

DB<5> print $animal;
1

This behaviour is explained in the perlop manpage for m// binding in scalar context:

http://www.annocpan.org/~NWCLARK/perl-5.8.8/pod/perlop.pod\#256

thank you...