This reminds me of decimation. When I was uploading a 3D model to a game I play, the game imposed a strict polygon limit of 20,000, as it was a VR game and the developers did not want to place a huge burden on rendering. As such, if you wanted to upload a model that had more than 20,000 polygons, you would have to manually go through the mesh and use various decimation techniques to reduce the number of triangles: collapsing multiple edges into one was a pretty common technique, for less important bodyparts like the legs that are approximately flat, you can collapse edges and get a similar shape, whereas for more detailed or curved parts like fingers you wanted to leave those with a high poly count.
1 fewer vertex and 3 fewer edges
This reminds me of decimation. When I was uploading a 3D model to a game I play, the game imposed a strict polygon limit of 20,000, as it was a VR game and the developers did not want to place a huge burden on rendering. As such, if you wanted to upload a model that had more than 20,000 polygons, you would have to manually go through the mesh and use various decimation techniques to reduce the number of triangles: collapsing multiple edges into one was a pretty common technique, for less important bodyparts like the legs that are approximately flat, you can collapse edges and get a similar shape, whereas for more detailed or curved parts like fingers you wanted to leave those with a high poly count.