Humans.

Humanity.

The most diverse, adaptable, creative, and mentally flexible race in the Federation. Though many other races see humans as the poor cousins of the Federation, with their mayfly brief lives and abominablly huge families, Humanity's weaknesses are its very strengths. We humans are driven to excellence by our constant awareness of our own mortality, that the AT BEST 90 years we have to live our life will be gone all to soon, and we must cram into that time everything we will EVER do, say, or experience. Even just the sights and sounds of Holy Terra would beggar the effort of any human being to take them in, and with an ever expanding chunk of the galaxy to explore we hath become like unto maniac hamsters continually running on a wheel trying to snatch just one more experience before the reaper claims us...

We humans are both the most numerous, and divided, race in the Federation. Being one of the shortest lived races and most adaptable, human cultures change quickly, leading us to have many representatives in the lesser chamber of The United Federation of Civilizations' Senate. We also hath a significant amount of pull in the greater chamber because of the Acts of Distinction, which declared that any group of crossbreeds between two races which are fertile and can breed true among their own were to have their own representatives in the greater chamber of the Senate. We humans are half of the ancestral bloodline of most such races, and as such have some measure of influence with them. Since many such races have very small populations, without Humans creating new half-breed children they would eventually die out...

Humanity's propensity to sexual enthusiasm leads to large families, while our nigh psychotic determination to protect and provide for our children ensures that most of them live. This means that we humans have become the most numerous race within the Federation, with members of our species being found on most every colony-world of the Federation. Humans also seem to have at some point in the distant past been part of some previous galactic nation, as the Federation has found not less than 26 worlds beyond Holy Terra where humans had already formed Colonies or even thriving Civilizations when the Federation explorers discovered them. Many Federation colony worlds also end up having one or more human dominated 'states' on them when the colonial period comes to a close. This has become a self-perpetuating cycle: humans join most colonization efforts, breed like rabbits, and therefore have excess population to send out more colonists to new colony worlds.

Humans hath very diverse skin tones, eye colors, and hair colors. Everything from skin so black it shines purple when wet to skin so pale that you can see the veins and arteries through it; eyes that are bright red with blood vessels, blue like ice, emerald green, violet like an amethyst, to brown so dark one cannot tell where iris ends and pupil begins; and hair that is silver, golden, copper, midnight-black, tan, sandy, salt-and-pepper to occasional hues that are slightly un-natural, such as greenish or light blue; all this ist to be found among the humans of the Federation somewhere.

Yet, for the nonce, we must know thy gender...