In the episode mentioned above, Burroughs says he "owes Philander an apology", for laughing at his idea of living dinosaurs. Thus, he gets portrayed in a much more positive light in the book.
While the disguise Tantor wears as a giant female beetle is not very convincing, it works because he was sprayed with beetle pheromones. Beetles are not very visual animals, and they would probably try to mate anything that smells like a female beetle.
As a kid I couldn't understand why the writers decided to make the Leopard Men, a secret society of cannibalistic people both in Real Life and the original novels, La's Forced Transformation minions. Then I found out the Lost City La rules over in both the series and the books is named Opar and I realized the connection between her and the Leopard Men is a Stealth Pun: La+Opar = Leopard.
