Why does a mercator projection exaggerate the areas of land masses near the poles?

The Mercator projection distorts the size of land masses as it represents the Earth's curved surface on a flat plane. This projection maintains angles and shapes, making it useful for navigation, but it stretches areas near the poles significantly. As a result, regions like Greenland and Antarctica appear much larger than they are in reality, while equatorial regions are shown more accurately. This distortion occurs because the projection uses a cylindrical method, which cannot perfectly represent the spherical shape of the Earth.