Xpath expression in findnodes () returns an empty nodelist

XML:

<zoo xmlns="http://www.zoo.com" xmlns:xs="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xs:schemaLocation="http://www.zoo.com employee.xsd">

<area id="1" posizione="nord" nome="scimmie">
    <animale>
        <nome>Gigi</nome>
        <sesso>Male</sesso>
        <eta>3</eta>
    </animale>

    <animale>
        <nome>Gigia</nome>
        <sesso>Female</sesso>
        <eta>2</eta>
    </animale>
</area>

<area id="2" posizione="nord" nome="giraffe">
    <animale>
        <nome>Giro</nome>
        <sesso>Male</sesso>
        <eta>6</eta>
    </animale>

    <animale>
        <nome>Gira</nome>
        <sesso>Female</sesso>
        <eta>5</eta>
    </animale>
</area>
</zoo>

the code:

my $parser = XML::LibXML->new;
my $doc = $parser->parse_file("../xml/animals.xml");
my $root = $doc->getDocumentElement();

my $new_animal = $doc->createElement("animale");

my $name_element = $doc->createElement("nome");
$name_element->appendTextNode($name);

my $gender_element = $doc->createElement("sesso");
$gender_element->appendTextNode($gender);

my $age_element = $doc->createElement("eta");
$age_element->appendTextNode($age);

$new_animal->appendChild($name_element);
$new_animal->appendChild($gender_element);
$new_animal->appendChild($age_element);

my $area_element = $root -> findnodes("//area[\@id=$area]")->get_node(1);

$area_element->appendChild($new_animal);

$ area is the identifier of the area (usually 1 that I am testing)

My goal is to create a new animal and add it to the desired area.

but i have a problem that istruction

    my $area_element = $root -> findnodes("//area[\@id=$area]")->get_node(1);

will not work because $ area_element is undef because findnodes always returns an empty nodelist (checked print size ()).

I think the problem is the xpath expression inside findnodes, but I can’t understand what is wrong, I use the same expression with a different library (XML :: XPath) and it works.

What happened?