Scaling bones to 0, what happens with the triangles?

So, I want to scale some bones of an animated creature model to 0 to have the possibility to add or remove limbs. I’m just wondering how these scaled triangles are calculated. Let’s say my full mesh is made of 10000 triangles but 2 bones are scaled to 0 to make it look like a 8000 triangle model. Is it still calculated as a full 10000 triangle animated model? If so, is there a script or something that would make all these scale vertexes be calculated as only 1, since they would all be at the same exact location? I hope i’m making myself clear, my english might not be on point. Thanks in advance for the help.

One solution would be to go back into your 3D editing software and split the mesh in the locations you need. For example, have the left arm as one mesh and the rest as the other. Rig the entire thing as one mesh (even though there are 2) and export as FBX.
Import into unity and you’ll have your character with 2 meshes. Now when you need to, scale your bones to zero and disable the Renderer of the Arm (or whatever piece/s you separated).
This way the piece of the mesh you disabled the renderer for is no longer calculated.

Thanks, that did the trick. I just added alpha around the edge of the added limb and disabled it to cast shadow so they blend together perfectly.

But that created another problem. Is there a way to make the limb cast shadow on everything exept a specific object?