Gilda was "born" when her head and torso were excavated from a sand dune off the coast of Mozambique in 1968. Shortly thereafter, her limbs were found some 50 miles inland entangled in the branches of a Silver Leucodendron tree, and she was shipped to San Francisco where a group of renegade scientists worked day and night to assemble her. Gilda's predilection for clairvoyance has led her to profess her belief that she was a marine biologist in a former life, as she feels a tingling sensation in her spine at the very mention of the word "plankton."