You are looking at the HTML representation of the XML format.
HTML is good for debugging, but is unsuitable for application use.
Specify the format parameter to change the output format.
To see the non HTML representation of the XML format, set format=xml.
See the complete documentation, or API help for more information. 
<?xml version="1.0"?>
<api>
  <query>
    <pages>
      <page pageid="98" ns="0" title="Catalogue of favourite books" />
      <page pageid="86" ns="0" title="Size of humankind" />
      <page pageid="142" ns="0" title="Some studies using animal models" />
      <page pageid="103" ns="0" title="T-shirts and other merchandising" />
      <page pageid="37" ns="0" title="Why did insects win?" />
    </pages>
  </query>
</api>