Yes, it's possible to reduce the number of polygons without loosing quality and in many cases the quality is improved. Many models have an unecessary number of polygons that are not needed and that render very baddly. It is common to happen with meshes created by 3dsMax, many of those extra and wrong polygons renders black in Poser. Rhino performs better tnan 3dsMax, but in the junctions of surfaces are created extra polygons too. I don't know any special software for this task, I do it by hand. There is a plugin for 3dsMax "polychop" that sometimes can be useful. The software for reducing the polygon number is called "decimator" so search with this name.

Stupidity also evolves!