Dino Squad/Headscratchers

Why does Victor Veloci have human grunts?
Do they know that he's probably going to kill them if he succeeds? or are they just motivated by money?
 * If it seemed like Veloci wanted to keep things the way they are but replace humans with dino-people they might be in it for the money, but he only creates prehistoric monsters, meaning he probably wants to take over the world by destroying human civilization.
 * Maybe he cut some deal with them, where if they serve him well enough, he'll turn them into dino-people like the teens are.
 * Except he's always trying to catch the teens to find out how their mutation is so complete.
 * "We'll use what we find out by capturing the teens to turn you into full dinos."
 * He doesn't know the teens are the dinosaurs.

Bigger issue: Why in the high holy f**k does this show qualify as "Educational"?
I shudder to think it does the same way "The Jetsons" qualified. ("It teaches children about life in the future!" Um... what?)
 * The show's creators probably pitched it as something like "It's a fun show kids will love to see and it will teach them about dinosaurs! It's educational!" to get it more attention. Probably no one cared enough to really complain when it aired.
 * it's educational because it rams life lessons down the viewer's throat
 * It'll drive kids to read books.

How can they do this shapeshifting?
I'm not talking about the kids, because Applied Phlebotinum is apparent there, but about Victor and the Teacher. They, as velociraptors, survived in a cave for millions of years, gained human level intelligence and the ability to assume human form. All without explaining how they survived that long, or how they gained these abilities. Would it have killed the writers to mention a radioactive asteroid or maybe the result of scientific experimentation by Neglectful Precursors? A single line of dialogue is all I'm asking for here.